Founded in 1928 and renovated with the help of the Japan International Cooperation Agency in 1999-2000, the Geological Museum is an important scientific site in the city of Bandung and as such, rather fittingly stands as the biggest museum in the city. The history of the museum goes back to the mid-1800s, when the Dutch conducted a geological survey of the region and needed an appropriate to house the fossils, minerals and maps that came about from that survey, hence prompting the construction of the museum.

The museum is best known for holding parts of the meteorites, including part of a 11.5 kg chondrite that fell in 1871. Rare due to its LL6 classification, with LL (low iron, low metal) types being the least abundant type of ordinary chondrite, even those with little knowledge of space rocks can admire the beautiful breccia structure of the meteorite and be in awe of the beautiful specimen of the rocks found in the early solar system. There is also the huge 156kg Jatipengilon meteorite that was found in East Java in 2011, exhibited in the ‘Origin of the Earth’ section of the museum.

The other major exhibit is that of the fossilised skeleton of an elephant which is so well-preserved that scientists were able to make out that this male elephant lived around 165,000 years ago and died at the age of 49. This fossil of the Elephas hysudrindicus was discovered in 2011, different from the modern Asian elephant, lived during the Pleistocene Era, or commonly referred to as the Ice Age. There are other fascinating exhibits in the ‘History of Life’ section, including other other extinct elephants that used to live in pre-historic Indonesia like the Stegodon trigonochepalus. They also have a replica of a T-rex and fossils from the pre-Cambrian period, including trilobytes, and a 3.5 billion year old Stromatolite, created by bacteria, making them the oldest evidence of life on earth. There are even skulls on display there, including the Java Man (Homo erectus erectus), a species which caused great controversy in the late 1800s.

With so much to look at, you can get lost and spend a whole day in the giant labyrinth of natural and human artifacts!