Mifune Dinosaur Museum

photo by ノボホショコロトソ · CC BY 4.0

photo by hyolee2 · CC BY-SA 4.0

In 2025 a vertebra from Mifune became Nipponopterus, Japan's first pterosaur.

The dinosaur hall is made up of mounted skeletons, but the museum's own pieces are the fossils found in the Mifune area. In a laboratory open to the public, the preparators chip away at a block of rock borrowed from a museum in Montana, without knowing what it contains. The museum is small: you can see everything in one or two hours.

In August 1979 two people found, at Kami-Umenoki in the Mifune area, the tooth of a carnivorous dinosaur: announced in 1984 as the first carnivorous dinosaur fossil in Japan, it is known as ‘Mifune-ryū’. That discovery gave rise to the study of the Mifune Group (御船層群), an Upper Cretaceous stratum more than 2,000 metres thick which, among the strata of the same period in Japan, the museum considers the most varied in fossil dinosaurs. The museum opened in April 1998, was renovated in 2000 and opened its new building in April 2014. In March 2025 a scientific journal published the description of Nipponopterus mifunensis, a pterosaur with an estimated wingspan of between 2 and 3.5 metres, described from a neck vertebra found at Mifune: it is the first pterosaur in Japan to be named from a body fossil.

ℹ️ Open 9:00–17:00, entry until 16:30; closed on Mondays (if a public holiday, the following day) and at the end of the year: from 28/12/2026 to 04/01/2027, reopening on 05/01/2027. During school holidays and for special exhibitions it may also open on Mondays. Ticket 500 yen adults, 300 for high school and university students, 200 for elementary and junior high; free for children below elementary school age if accompanied, and for those with a disability booklet. By car about 10 minutes from the Mifune exit, with parking in the area marked in red on the map on the website (the yellow one is for people going to the town hall). By bus: from Kumamoto 15 minutes to Sakuramachi terminal (bays 1 or 24), then about 50 minutes with Kumamoto Bus to the stop 御船町恐竜博物館前, one minute from the entrance; buses are infrequent. Lifts are available and wheelchairs can be borrowed. ⚠️ Closed after the earthquake of 28/07/2026 and reopened on 21/08/2026 (museum notice of 20/08/2026); the website was updated on 18/10/2026, with workshops and events scheduled for November.

Sources: mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp · mifunemuseum.jp

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