Museu das Trilobites (Canelas)

The Museu das Trilobites, officially the Centro de Interpretação Geológica de Canelas, is a small private museum in the village of Canelas, in the Arouca Geopark. It sits next to the Pedreira do Valério, a working slate quarry run by Ardósias Valério & Figueiredo, and almost everything on display came out of that quarry. The museum began with the passion of Manuel Valério, who promoted the Arouca Geopark.

Quarrying at Canelas restarted in 1988. As the workers split the rock into thin roofing slates, fossils started appearing between the layers. The museum describes them as “natural photos” of animals that lived on the seabed. Rather than treat them as a nuisance, the quarry kept them. Exhibitions at the universities of Porto, Vila Real, Coimbra and Lisbon followed, and the interpretation centre opened in 2006 to show the best finds permanently. The museum calls it the most important collection of trilobites on display in Portugal.

Most of the fossils are about 465 million years old, from the Ordovician period. At that time this part of Portugal was the floor of a sea on the edge of a huge southern continent called Gondwana, not far from the South Pole. Besides trilobites, the collection has fossil bivalves, snails, brachiopods, sea lilies (crinoids), graptolites and cephalopods, relatives of today’s squid and octopus. Some of those cephalopods grew up to 2 metres long and were the top predators of the Canelas seabed. There are also trace fossils: burrows and even fossilised droppings left by animals living in the mud.

The main attraction is size. Most trilobites were a few centimetres long, but many at Canelas are huge. The museum’s fossils page tells the story like a record chase. In the 1890s the Portuguese palaeontologist Nery Delgado described a species from this same rock formation, Uralichas ribeiroi, whose fragments suggested it could reach 66 cm. In the mid-1990s the quarry produced a moulted shell of Ogyginus forteyi 56 cm long, then a Hungioides specimen of 52 cm. In 2007 a badly broken specimen at least 70 cm long turned up, and less than a month later another, partly rolled up, that a visiting specialist later estimated at around 86 cm. A Nobiliasaphus found at the end of 2009 would have been about 73 cm long with its tail spine.

For children, the best detail is that some of the giants were found lying next to tiny trilobites of other species, one of them sixteen times smaller, and one small enough to be smaller than the big one’s eye. The museum also points out that many trilobite fossils are moulted shells, not bodies: like crabs today, trilobites shed their old skeleton as they grew.

Trilobites were arthropods, in the same big group as insects, spiders and crabs. They lived for nearly 300 million years, from the early Cambrian until the end of the Permian, so they appeared long before the dinosaurs and died out before them too. Their name comes from their body, which is split lengthways into three lobes. They had some of the oldest known eyes, made of lenses of calcite crystal, which fossilise well. Many could roll into a ball to protect themselves, the way a woodlouse does, and some fossils at Canelas are rolled up.

Visits are guided, which helps: a guide can point out the giant specimens and the tiny ones hiding beside them, and answer the “how old?” questions. It’s a small museum, so it’s a short visit, and it works well on a wet day or as a break from walking in the geopark.

Toddlers will see “big bugs in stone” and not much more. Children from about 5 like the size of the fossils and the rolled-up ones. Eight- to twelve-year-olds, and teens studying evolution or geology, get the most from the story of deep time and the record-breaking finds.

The museum is pet friendly. It is closed on Mondays and may close for holidays in December and January, so check before driving out in winter.

Visit Arouca says the museum works with the slate company to arrange visits to the slate processing unit, where you can see how the rock is split and cut, and there is a signed educational route, the Rota do Paleozóico, with several trails through the surrounding geology. Ask the museum about both when you book, since they aren’t bookable online.

Opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 17:00, and Sunday 14:00 to 17:00, with last entry 30 minutes before closing. Other times can be arranged two or three days ahead. Groups of more than 20 must book; smaller groups can just turn up. When we checked, the museum’s own site listed a guided visit at €6; the Visit Arouca page still showed €5. Contact the museum on +351 962 657 092 or geral@museudastrilobites.pt.

The trilobites pair well with the Paiva Walkways and the 516 Arouca suspension bridge, also in the Arouca Geopark. For more fossils and footprints, the Pegadas de Dinossáurios da Serra de Aire has real dinosaur tracks, and Lisbon’s Museu Geológico shows fossils from every period of Portugal’s past in 19th-century display cases.

How old are the trilobites at Arouca?

Most are about 465 million years old, from the Ordovician period, when the area was under the sea.

Do you need to book the Museu das Trilobites?

Only groups of more than 20 need to book during normal hours. Visits at other times need 2 to 3 days’ notice.

Is the trilobite museum open on Mondays?

No. It opens Tuesday to Sunday.

Can we find our own fossils?

The museum’s fossils come from the working quarry, which is private. Ask the museum about quarry and slate-factory visits and the Rota do Paleozóico trails.

Can we bring the dog?

Yes. The museum describes itself as pet friendly.