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To the right of the denomination, fossils will serve as watermarks on the new banknotes.
Keystone
From shells to pterosaurs: fossils are helping to make the new Swiss banknotes forgery-proof. They adorn the notes as watermarks.
In addition to the graphic designers, a palaeontologist from the Natural History Museum in Bern was also involved in the development of the new banknote series presented this week, as the museum announced on Friday. The Lausanne-based graphic design studio Emphase GmbH asked researcher Ursula Menkveld-Gfeller to work on the project.
Her task was to find suitable Swiss fossils for the various altitudes represented by the banknotes from 10 to 1000 francs.
The future 50-franc note, for example, will feature a sauropod from the Jura as a watermark. The 200-franc note shows an ammonite. Other watermark motifs include a fossil shell, an extinct shark, a fish dinosaur and a pterosaur.
The banknote designs focus on the lowlands, the Central Plateau, the Jura, the Pre-Alps, the mountains and the high mountains. They depict the plant species found there on the front and architecture, infrastructure and native insects on the reverse.
The watermarks on the designs of the new banknotes are inconspicuous next to the denomination on the notes. The new note series will be launched in the early 2030s at the earliest.
06.03.2026, 13:58
