Cuenca’s cutting-edge palaeontology museum is a must for anyone interested in Spain's fascinating prehistorical record. Though anchored by its appropriately kid-friendly dinosaur exhibition (‘Tierra de Dinosaurios’), this is a serious paleontology museum, with key specimens on display that have been instrumental in scientific breakthroughs, and signage in Spanish and English. Spacious modern galleries are decorated with locally found fossils, skeletons and skulls, plus mock-ups of enormous Cretaceous-era reptiles like the Titanosaur, among the largest land creatures to ever walk the earth.
Highlights include fossils of the Iberomesornis (a key species linking dinosaurs and modern birds), Spinolestes (a tiny prehistoric creature that upended notions of the simplicity of early mammals) and the remarkably intact skeleton of Concavenator, the unusual hump-backed dinosaur.
There are some fun audiovisual exhibits and the landscaped grounds are home to more prehistoric giants that kids can pose beside for that ultimate photo op for show-and-tell back home. It's about a 15-minute (uphill) walk south of the centre.
