The Krantz collections of palaeontology held at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) : a century of teaching and museum activities

The University of Coimbra holds a large repository of palaeontological collections bought from European mineral dealers, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among these specimens currently available at the Science Museum stand out three collections acquired from the Krantz house, between 1890 and 1913, for the Section of Mineralogy and Geology of the Natural History Museum. Their taxonomic diversity is high, as well as their geographic and stratigraphic wide-range origins, representing many classical locations and sedimentary formations of the European geology, and overseas countries. These collections have been used since long for teaching in practical classes of Natural Sciences at the University, using hands-on procedures. Together with other contemporary Krantz collections, known by several Iberian institutions, reveal an important heritage with both scientific and historical relevance that should be preserved, studied and reviewed from a scientific point of view.