Back in primary school, Marty was nicknamed 'Dinosaur Marty', and that hardly changed ever since. In 2007, he got to participate in a Naturalis dig and excavated his first dinosaur, Plateosaurus. This led to a dream come true in 2015: Marty excavated and currently prepares a whole herd of Triceratops that was found by the Naturalis team in Wyoming, USA. Marty can be seen at work in the actual museum in the so-called Dinolab, where he'll happily show you and everyone else how you'd make dinosaur bones live happily ever after and make them shine again in an exhibit.
Dinosaur preparator fossils dinolab triceratops paleontologist
The Triceratops-bones of Naturalis
A Naturalis-team excavated these Triceratops-bones between 2015 and 2019 in the United States. They are currently being prepared in the Dinolab for everyone to see, in the museum.
Naturalis' Triceratops-bones are part of Natasja den Ouden's collection, but first they are being restored for both research purposes and the possibility to once again show them to you in the museum. Marty is not doing this single handedly, but runs a dedicated team of volunteers together with his colleague Yasmin Grooters.
TriceratopsDirk
The Dinolab team is especially proud of the first skeleton they already finished: Triceratops Dirk. This impressive beast was fully prepared by Marty and his colleagues and can currently by found on the third floor of the Naturalis museum, together with all our other dinosaurs.
