Rio de Janeiro's centuries-old National Museum has received an extensive donation of 1,104 animal and plant fossils nearly six years after being engulfed by a devastating fire that inflicted incalculable damage on Brazil's cultural heritage.
The 200-year-old museum in a park to the north of Rio de Janeiro's city center was sparked by an electrical short-circuit on the evening of September 2, 2018, destroying about 85% of its archive of 20 million artifacts.
Losses included priceless documents detailing Indigenous life and culture before colonization, a gigantic dinosaur known as Dinoprata, and Egyptian and Greco-Roman artifacts belonging to the Brazilian imperial family.
The collection is being rebuilt in expectation of the museum's planned reopening in April 2026. St. Christopher's Palace's reconstruction was underway in 2021.
The front courtyard and renovated facade were reopened a year later, but the building's interior renovations are still ongoing.
UFRJ paleontologists and students are participating in excavation trips in Wyoming and Montana to find dinosaurs that might one day be on display in Brazil as part of a partnership between the museum and Pohl's Swiss-based Interprospekt Group.
Arts patron Frances Reynolds arranged the fossil donation and led the drive to encourage collectors and enthusiasts to join the public and private sectors to help reconstruct the National Museum's vast archive.
Alexander Kellner, the institution's director, told reporters on Tuesday, celebrating this magical moment of the fossil donation, that it was an enormous tragedy. He noted they need to look ahead and rebuild the institution as Brazil needs its national museum back.
He added that it is the most important donation of fossils received by the museum in recent history and of vital scientific significance.
The Araripe Basin, which spans the states of Ceará, Pernambuco, and Piauí in northeastern Brazil, is the source of the 1,104 fossils donated by the Swiss-German collector Burkhard Pohl. There are two geological strata, including palaeontological material from the Early Cretaceous period.
Furthermore, two distinct dinosaur fossils, two unexamined pterosaur skulls, and a Tetrapodophis, possibly the oldest snake fossil, are among the donated items. They will be displayed in future paleontology exhibitions and used for scientific research at the museum, which is part of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
