[from PostNL handouts] [click on any of the pictures for larger versions]
Prehistoric Animals

Issue dates: 13 June 2023, 26 September 2023, 14 November 2023, 19 March 2024

On 13 June 2023, the first three stamp sheets in the new Prehistoric Animals series — the Fox whale, the woolly mammoth and the sabre-toothed cat — will be published. Each stamp sheet contains five stamps featuring the animals and their fossils.

The entire series comprises 12 stamp sheets. Each quarter, PostNL will publish three stamp sheets at a time. The denomination on these stamps is ‘1’, the denomination for items weighing up to 20g with destinations in the Netherlands.

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, palaeontologists can deduce how large the animals were and their other external features. Comparison with surviving related species also provides useful information.

Each stamp sheet 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.

After Velp-based studio026 was commissioned to design 12 stamp sheets about prehistoric animals, Anne Schaufeli and Huub de Lang first of all visited the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. “This museum has a great collection of fossils, mostly from Dutch soil,” Schaufeli said. “Bram Langeveld, the curator, had inspiring stores to tell. He told us about prehistoric animals that we didn’t even know existed.”

However, the Museum did not have visual material, so Schaufeli and de Lang turned to ManimalWorks, also in Rotterdam, which produces models of prehistoric animals based on scientific data and information from sources such as cave drawings.

ManimalWorks builds life-size reconstructions for educational purposes such as museums and scientific exhibitions, said Schaufeli. “It’s just amazing how life-like his animal models look. They’re so life like that you could just encounter them somewhere. Before the models go to the client, they are photographed in an environment that is as close as possible to their original habitat. These photos were used on the stamp sheets.”

The overall design concept is based on the stratification of the earth. “We wanted to show not just the animal and the fossil, but the connection between them as well,” said Schaufeli. “Our narrative is that by looking into the earth, you travel back in time.”

Technical Details:
Design: studio026, Velp
Animal models: ManimalWorks, Rotterdam
Stamp size: 30 x 40mm (wxh):
Sheet size: 170 x 122 mm (wxh)
Paper: Normal with phosphor print
Gum: Gummed
Printing technique: Offset
Printing colours: Cyan, magenta, yellow, black
Print run: 5,000 sheets per issue
Format: Sheet containing 5 personalised stamps in 5 different: designs

6 June 2023
Item number 830032 Prehistoric Animals, the Fox whale
Item number 830033 Prehistoric Animals, woolly mammoth
Item number 830034 Prehistoric Animals, sabre-toothed cat

26 September 2023
Item number 830035 Prehistoric Animals, Nothosaurus
Item number 830036 Prehistoric Animals, woolly rhinoceros
Item number 830037 Prehistoric Animals, aurochs

14 November 2023
Item number 830038 Prehistoric Animals, blunt-snouted dolphin
Item number 830039 Prehistoric Animals, mastodon
Item number 830040 Prehistoric Animals, great auk

19 March 2024
Item number 830041 Prehistoric Animals, large baleen whale
Item number 830042 Prehistoric Animals, giant beaver
Item number 830043 Prehistoric Animals, steppe bison

Note: PostNL does not sell directly to collectors in North America. Its website refers to a company called Nordfirm, which says it sells Dutch new issues at face value. The Virtual Stamp Club has no connection to this company.