3083) Blunt-snouted Dolphin, Mastodon and Great Auk, Netherlands: "Prehistoric Animals Stamp Series": Post NL (Netherlands Post) has issued the third three Stamp Sheets in a series of 12 Stamp Sheets featuring extinct animal species, fossils of which were found in the Netherlands: Date of Stamp Sheets issue: 14.11.2023:
About "Prehistoric Animals Stamp Series" - Set II:
On 13.06.2023, in the new Prehistoric animals Stamp Series, the first three stamp sheets on the Fox whale, the Woolly Mammoth and the Sabre-toothed Cat were published.
Each stamp sheet contains five stamps featuring the animals and their fossils. The Prehistoric animals series comprises 12 stamp sheets.
Each quarter, PostNL will publish three stamp sheets at a time. On 26.09.2023 (Nothosaurus, Woolly Rhinoceros and Aurochs), 14.11.2023 (Blunt-snouted Dolphin, Mastodon and Great Auk) and on 19.03.2024 (Large Baleen Whale, Giant Beaver and Steppe Bison) were/will be published.
The denomination on these stamps is ‘1’, the denomination for items weighing up to 20g with destinations in the Netherlands. The design of the stamps was created by studio026 in Velp.
The Prehistoric animals stamps depict animals from various geological epochs, such as the Nothosaurus from the Triassic (245 million years ago), the large baleen whale from the Miocene (8.7-8.1 million years ago), the blunt-snouted dolphin from the Pliocene (3 million years ago), the woolly mammoth from the Pleistocene (2 million years ago) and the great auk from the Holocene (approximately 5,000 years ago).
On 14.11.2023, in the new "Prehistoric Animals Stamp Series", Post NL (Netherlands Post) has issued the thid set of three stamp sheets featuring the Blunt-snouted Dolphin, the Mastodon and the Great Auk.
Each stamp sheet consisted of five stamps featuring the animals and their fossils.
The Prehistoric Animals Stamp Series comprises 12 stamp sheets in all.
Every quarter, PostNL will issue three stamp sheets at a time.
The next issue dates are 14.11.2023 (Blunt-snouted Dolphin, Mastodon and Great Auk) and 19.03.2024 (Large Baleen Whale, Giant Beaver and Steppe Bison).
The denomination on these stamps is ‘1’, the denomination for items weighing up to 20g with destinations in the Netherlands. The design of the stamps was created by studio026 in Velp.
The prehistoric Stamp Series - will represent animals from various geological epochs:
The Prehistoric Animals stamps will depict animals from various geological epochs, such as the Nothosaurus from the Triassic (245 million years ago), the Large Baleen Whale from the Miocene (8.7-8.1 million years ago), the Blunt-snouted Dolphin from the Pliocene (3 million years ago), the Woolly Mammoth from the Pleistocene (2 million years ago) and the Great Auk from the Holocene (approximately 5,000 years ago).
All 12 prehistoric animals featured on the stamps inhabited the area that is now The Netherlands.
Their presence has been inferred from fossils found in Dutch soil, including in the North Sea, in the Eastern and Western Scheldt, along rivers and in quarries. The fossils predominantly comprise bones, skulls, jaws, teeth, molars and horns. Based on the shape of the fossils, paleontologists can deduce how large the animals were and their other external features.
Comparison with surviving related species also provides useful information.
Each stamp sheet in the Prehistoric Animals Stamp Series includes five personal stamps in five different designs.
Three stamps feature various images of the prehistoric animal in its natural habitat.
The other two stamps feature fossils of the same animal, surrounded by drawn earth layers in which that fossil was found.
The sheet edge features one of the animal photos in large. This photo runs underneath the stamps.
Each stamp sheet has a base colour referring to the geological epoch in which the prehistoric animal existed.
The timeline of all these epochs is shown vertically on the left-hand side of the stamp sheet, above the series title. The name of the prehistoric animal appears on each stamp and in the top right-hand corner of the sheet.
The bottom right-hand corner features a short text about the species and its fossils.
The font used for the denomination 1 and Nederland was designed in 2018 by type designer Martin Majoor from Arnhem.
The Square 721 (a version of Eurostile by Turin-based type designer Aldo Novarese, 1962, published by Bitstream) was used for the title and the Akzidenz Grotesk (H. Berthold AG from Berlin, 1896) was used for the body text.
Fraunces (Phaedra Charles for Undercase Type from New York, 2020) was used as the serif font.
All of the animals featured on the Prehistoric animals stamps have become extinct – some of them millions of years ago. However, science can still deduce from the fossils what the animals roughly looked like.
After Velp-based studio026 was commissioned to design 12 stamp sheets about prehistoric animals exhibited at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.
Life-like models and drawings were combined with fossils from the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. From those combinations, 12 prehistoric animals were selected, all of which lived on Dutch soil at one stage.
The Stamp Sheets:
The Blunt-snouted Dolphin ("Platalearostrum hoekmani" or "Albert Hoekman's spoon-rostrum") is a prehistoric pilot whale known from a single specimen consisting of a partial rostrum, partial maxilla, partial premaxilla, and partial vomer.
The fossil was discovered by Albert Hoekman on board a fishing trawler in the North Sea in 2008 and described in 2010 by Klaas Post and Erwin J.O. Kompanje.
The blunt-snouted dolphin is believed to have had a balloon like structure atop its rostrum and is estimated to have lived during the middle Pliocene to early Pleistocene.
Mastodon:
A Mastodon (mastós 'breast' + odoús 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus Mammut.
Mastodons inhabited North and Central America from the late Miocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.
Mastodons are the most recent members of the family Mammutidae, which diverged from the ancestors of elephants at least 25 million years ago.
They lived in herds and were predominantly forest-dwelling animals.
The Mastodon had a browsing diet with a preference for woody material, distinct from that of the contemporary Columbian mammoth.
Mastodons became extinct as part of the Quaternary extinction event that exterminated most Pleistocene megafauna present believed to have been caused by a combination of climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene and hunting by humans, as evidenced by a number of kill sites where mastodon remains are associated with human artifacts.
Great Auk:
The Great Auk ("Pinguinus impennis") is a species of flightless alcid that became extinct in the mid-19th century.
It was the only modern species in the genus Pinguinus. It is not closely related to the birds now known as penguins, which were discovered later and so named because of their physical resemblance to the great auk.
It bred on rocky, remote islands with easy access to the ocean and a plentiful food supply, a rarity in nature that provided only a few breeding sites for the great auks.
When not breeding, they spent their time foraging in the waters of the North Atlantic, ranging as far south as northern Spain and along the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, and Great Britain.
The bird was 75 to 85 centimetres (30 to 33 inches) tall and weighed about 5 kilograms (11 pounds), making it the largest alcid to survive into the modern era, and the second-largest member of the alcid family overall (the prehistoric Miomancalla was larger).
It had a black back and a white belly. The black beak was heavy and hooked, with grooves on its surface. During summer, great auk plumage showed a white patch over each eye.
During winter, the Great Auk lost these patches, instead developing a white band stretching between the eyes.
The wings were only 15 cm (6 in) long, rendering the bird flightless. Instead, the Great Auk was a powerful swimmer, a trait that it used in hunting. Its favourite prey were fish, including Atlantic menhaden and capelin, and crustaceans. Although agile in the water, it was clumsy on land.
Great Auk pairs mated for life. They nested in extremely dense and social colonies, laying one egg on bare rock. The egg was white with variable brown marbling. Both parents participated in the incubation of the egg for around six weeks before the young hatched. The young left the nest site after two to three weeks, although the parents continued to care for it.
On 03.06.1844, the last two confirmed specimens were killed on Eldey, off the coast of Iceland, ending the last known breeding attempt.
About the Natural History Museum, Rotterdam:
The Natural History Museum Rotterdam has its origins in collecting animals, shells, fossils and other naturalia from the collection of Dr A. B. van Deinse.
The museum was founded in 1927.
Since 1987, it has been based in Villa Dijkzigt on Westzeedijk in Museumpark (an urban park in Rotterdam).
The Natural History Museum Rotterdam has a special place in the Rotterdam cultural sector and plays a pioneering role among Dutch Natural History museums across the region. The museum attracts over 40,000 visitors each year.
Technical details:
Issue Date: 14.11.2023
Designer: studio026, Velp
Process: Offset
Colours: Cyan, magenta, yellow, black (CMYK)
Size:
Stamp size: 30.00 mm x 40.00 mm (w x h),
Sheet size: 170.00 mm x 122.00 mm (w x h)
Values: Denomination "1" for post weighing up to 20g with destinations within the Netherlands.
Dutch Castles Coin Series:
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Posts on Aruba on this blog:
Posts on SEPAC issues on this blog:
Posts on Finland on this Blog:
Posts on Sweden:
Links:
The undernoted two links will take you to our blog "Footloose" for two interesting posts written by me on the Dutch presence in Sadras in the 17th Century AD:
5) City of Bruges (or Brugge), Belgium: 20 Years as UNENCO World Heritage Site: A 20 Euro Silver Proof Coin issued by the Royakl Dutch Mint under licencing of the Royal Belgian Mint, on behalf of the National Bank of Belgium: Coin issue date: 26.02.2020
6) 100 Years of Nature & Environment Protection, Luxembourg: Commemorating the Centenary Anniversary of the "Letzebuerger Natur a Vulleschutsliga a.s.b.l. (Luxembourg Nature and Bird Protection Society):A 0.80 Euro Stamp issued by Luxembourg Postes (Post): Date of stamp issue: 10.03.2020
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Posts on SEPAC issues on this blog:
Links to Posts on Turks and Caicos Islands:
Links to Posts on Curacao on this Blog:
For some other interesting posts on Currencies of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, please visit the following links:
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Rajan Trikha has commented:
ReplyDelete"Interesting and informative post 👍"
Thank you so much, Trikha sahab.
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