National Museum of Brazil presents first exhibit after fire

The National Museum of Brazil on Wednesday presented its first exhibition after a huge fire destroyed 90 percent of its collection last September.

Located in the cultural center of the Mint Museum starting on Thursday and admission will be free.

The president of the National Museum, Alexander Kellner, said that the exhibition “shows that the museum is still alive and it continues to fulfill its function,” four months after the incident.

The exhibition, focusing on Antarctica, shows work conducted by paleontologists and displays fossils, along with tents, photographs and tools such as drills and brushes used by the team of researchers who traveled to the southern continent, among other things.

Paleontologist Juliana Sayao said that the most striking object in the exhibit is a fossil of a pterosaur, a flying reptile that is recorded for the first time in Antarctica during the Cretaceous period.

Six of the pieces on display in the two-room exhibition were recovered from the museum after the devastating blaze.

The first room simulates the conditions under which the research team that traveled to Antarctica performed their work - focusing on the current conditions at the site - while the second one takes visitors back 90 million years to show what the site looked like in that distant era.