This giant ostrich was nicknamed the 'elephant bird' because of its height of nearly 3 meters [10 ft] and its weight approaching 500 kilos [1100 lb].

Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz often used in jewelry. The name comes from the Ancient Greek ἀ a- ("not") and μέθυστος methustos ("intoxicated"), a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness; the ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst and made drinking vessels of it in the belief that it would prevent intoxication.

Ammonites are an extinct family of invertebrate molluscs typical of the Mesozoic era. They are the ancesstors of the nautiluses.

The argonaut is a cephalopod mollusc that lives in warm seas.

The largest moth in the world. It lives only to reproduce, and measures between 20 and 30 cm [8-12"].

A close cousin to the crab, they live on rocks, the hulls of boats, and even on whales.

The giant Bathynomus (Bathynomus giganteus) is a very large marine isopod. It belongs to the crustaceans, a sub-branch of the arthropods.

Dates from the Quaternary era and is around 100,000 years old. Due to tectonic movements, it is found on dry land.

Its name comes from the Greek beryllos, crystal of the color of sea water, quoted for the first time by Pline in its Natural history into 77. New England (Australia) has many layers; North Carolina (the United States) is also an ordinary source of beryl.

Often of colour blue sky, from where its name (of Latin caelestis), the celestite (or celestine) is a sulfate, of formula: SrSO4. The mineral is found worldwide, usually in small quantities. Pale blue crystal specimens are found in Madagascar.

Reef-building corals (madrepores) live in waters that are very warm (18-29°C / 64-84°F], very pure, with salinity between certain limits, with plenty of light, well oxygenated and clear, not too deep, and normally with a small tidal range.

This skull is the crossing of this ancestral culture and the knowledge to make Indonesians’ tattoers who are inspired today by the subjects that they draw on the arms of the sailors.

Crinoids are marine invertebrates, classified in the echinoderm family, in which we find in particular sea urchins and starfishes. Their morphology reminds plants, that’s why their common name is sea lilies.

The Crocodylus niloticus is found not only on the Nile, but in many regions of Africa. An average adult measures 4 m [13 ft], but specimens have been seen that were over 7 m [23 ft] in length.

Copper is one of the few metals that exist in the native state. This fact probably explains why it was the first metal used by Man.

Diodon is one of the coral fish which populates the hot seas of all the Indo-Pacific area and the Caribbean. It measures between 20 and 30 cm length and can live up to 20 years.

The Phylum Echinodermata is a flat sea-urchin that lives on sandy sea-beds.

The bearded dragon or bearded agama (Pogona vitticeps) is a species of lizard belonging to the agamidæ family that is found in desert and semi-desert regions of Australia.

This liana is known to produce the biggest pods of the world. Their length can reach 2 m and they contain from 10 to 15 seeds. We find her in tropical Africa, in tropical Asia as well as in the North of Australia and in Indian Ocean: in the North of Madagascar and in Mayotte.

The Barrel Sponge (Xestospongia muta) is found on the sea-bed at a depth of 10–120 m [33–390 ft] in warm seas (the Bahamas, Caribbean, Florida, Bermuda, Brazil).

The swordfish (Xiphias gladius) belongs to the marlin family. It can exceed 5 m [16 ft] in length and weigh nearly 500 kg [1100 lb], achieving peak speeds of 100 km/h [62 mph].

There are over 1,800 species of starfish. They live on sandy sea-beds, on coral reefs and right down to the abyssal depths.

Gabbro is a magmatic rock with a composition similar to basalt.

The gekko (Ptychozoon Kuhli) lives in trees in humid environments (tropical rainforests) in Malaysia.

In the wild, the Goliathus goliathus lives in the tropical rainforests of central Africa; it eats pollen, nectar, and ripe fruit.

The Goniatites are an order of ammonites that appeared in the early Devonian era (400 million years ago).

The Gorgons belong to a branch of the Cnidaria or Cœlenterata, like the corals, medusæ, and sea-anemones.

Rhacophorus nigropalmatus are called flying frogs because they are capable of jumping and gliding 12–15 m [40–50 ft] from the top of one tree to the base of another.

The king crab is a giant crab, it looks like a gigantic spider crab with its round carapace and its very long legs.

The labradorite is a mineral which belongs to the family of feldspars containing silicates. The peculiarity of certain parts is to possess a set of colors in the metallic brightness. The blue and the green are colors mostly present, but certain quality stones can be luxuriously showing all the colors of the spectra. It is used in jewelry, sculpture of art and lithotherapy.

A small lizard 12 cm [5"] long that lives in Malaysia, and more specifically, in the tropical forests of Borneo.

Present-day species of horseshoe crabs, which live in the western Atlantic and off Japan, Indonesia, and India, are veritable living fossils, since they have barely evolved any further for hundreds of millions of years.

This fossil is typical of the Lower Turonian era, between 92 and 88 million years ago. They are found in the desert, in an area of excavations south of the Atlas mountains in Morocco.

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is a faded species of the elphant’s family of and one of the representatives kind of Mammuthus. Appeared there is 200 000 at the age of 300 000, it occupied all Eurasia, to Siberia and even North America as it achieved during the glaciations.

The Melo broderipii was discovered by Lightfoot in 1786. It varies in size from 9–36 cm [3½–14"].

The Campo del Cielo contains 6.68 % nickel, 0.43 % cobalt, 0.25 % phosphorus, 87 ppm gallium, 407 ppm germanium and 3.6 ppm iridium. The remainder is made up of iron.

The largest known meteorite shower in history was seen in the Sikhote Alin mountain range (coastal territories of western Siberia to the north-northeast of Vladivostok) on February 12, 1947 at 10:38 local time.

The morphos are famous for the beautiful metal coloring of the males. These irisations, due to microsculptures of the scales, vary according to the orientation of the light. Approximately 80 species, of intermediate size to large, can meet in South America. Intensive hunting with business ends (decorative jewels, objects, collections) failed to cause their disappearance. These practices almost disappeared, the breeding replaced the capture.

The Mosasaurs "reptiles from the Meuse" were large marine 'lizards'. The first fossil was found in the French river Meuse in 1780.

The nautilus belongs to the family of cephalopods, which includes squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish.

The sea urchins populate very diverse maritime habitats, mainly coastal, on a depth going from 0 to 100 meters. Certain species, as Cidaris cidaris can live up to 1.000 meters of depth.

The Diadema setosum are echinoderms, which means 'spiny skin'. Starfish, sea cucumbers, and sand dollars are all echinoderms.

The lépidoptères (Lepidoptera) are an order of insects commonly called butterfly. They are characterized in an adult state by three pairs of legs (like all the insects) and by two pairs of wings covered with scales of colors very varied according to the species (more than 200.000 listed). The butterflies lay eggs which give rise to caterpillars. They are transformed into chrysalis and it emerges from it a butterfly.

Lycoptera davidi is a fresh-water fish that existed in the late Jurassic era (150 million years ago).

The main distinguishing feature of saw fish is the bony extension to their snouts, called a rostrum, which can measure up to 2 m [6'6"] long and carries some twenty 2 cm [1"] long teeth, giving it the appearance of a saw.

Pteropus vampyrus is the largest species of bat in the world. It can reach a wingspan of 1.7 m [67"] and weigh around 1 kg [2.2 lb].

The Pyrite is an iron sulphide. Its metallic brightness and its gilded color were worth to him the gold nickname of “fool' S gold”. The crystals are often cubic or of form deriving from the cube: octahedral, dodecahedral, and the faces can be striated.

Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones. Especially in Europe and the Middle East, varieties of quartz have been since antiquity the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings.

Crookes used the radiometer to prove that light is a form of energy. It converts light into movement.

The nurse shark is classified as Ginglymostoma Cirratum and belongs to the Orectolobidæ family. It can measure up to 3.75 m [12 ft] long.

Sand roses form through the evaporation of water that has infiltrated the sand. These crystal formations are very often found in soft ground (sand, clay), mainly in deserts.

It’s possible to find septarias everywhere but the most beautiful specimens come from Madagascar, Morocco or Belgium. Even if the geological formation is the same, we can very easily distinguish them by their colors and the form of the slits.

According to Indian mythology, the Shiva Lingam is the symbol of the god Shiva, one of the most sacred symbols of Antiquity, just as it still is today.

Although not much is known about the spinosauridae, we do know that they were all (Irritator, Challengri, Siamosaurus, Cristatusaurus) carnivorous dinosaurs with a long snout resembling that of a crocodile.

The regal thorny oyster (Spondylus regius), a fine red colour with large spines, fends off starfish to avoid getting eaten. The bright colour is a real warning for any prospective predators.

The first fossilized stromatolithes, date of more than 3,5 billion years, they are the oldest fossils existing. They are the traces of first bacterial forms of life in fixed colonies. These spherical structures took care during more than 500 million years trapping CO2 of the atmosphere and releasing of oxygen, thus allowing the appearance of another form of life. It’s to some extent the origin of the world.

The Syrinx Aruanus lives between the western coasts of Australia and the island of Java, and has been identified as the largest gastropod in the world.

This is the largest land tortoise, since male specimens may reach 1.2 m [4 ft] and weight 300 kg [660 lb], slightly more than the Galapagos giant tortoise (250 kg [550 lb]).

In the wild, the giant top shell snail, Trochus niloticus, is present over a very large geographical area, bounded to the West by Sri Lanka, to the East by the islands of Samoa, to the North by the Loo Choo islands, and to the South by the northern coast of Australia.

The watusi is a bovine of east Africa. His origin is mysterious, because he has no known parent (alive or disappeared) in sub-Saharan Africa