Handerson Oliveira / Museu Nacional-UFRJSkull of the pterosaur Ludodactylus, which lived in Northeast BrazilHanderson Oliveira / Museu Nacional-UFRJ
In May, 1,104 fossils were donated to Brazil’s National Museum, which was almost completely destroyed by a fire in September 2018. The set of fossils, dated at around 100 million years old, includes turtles, crocodiles, pterosaurs, plants, and insects from the Araripe basin in Northeast Brazil. The artifacts belonged to Swiss-German collector Burkhard Pohl and were returned to the country through the intermediation of Frances Reynolds, an Argentine based in Brazil. Since the disaster that destroyed almost 85% of its collection, the museum has received many donations, including 50 fossils from the Peruvian government, two rare minerals (uvarovite and charoite) from Russian collector Sergey Mironov, and a seventeenth-century Tupinambá cape measuring 1.8 meters in length and made of thousands of red bird feathers, which was previously held in the National Museum of Denmark. The museum is set to reopen to the public in 2026.
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