In September, a massive fire reduced much of Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro to ashes. The 200-year-old natural history museum contained more than 20 million objects, including the bones of ancient humans, rare dinosaur fossils, and a vast collection of bug and bird specimens. Nearly all of these irreplaceable items were lost.
The museum was Brazil’s oldest scientific institution. It housed many important artifacts made by indigenous people from the Americas. These items were on display for the public and used by researchers to study the region’s past. Together they represented thousands of years of cultural heritage.
Investigators are still unsure what caused the blaze at the museum. Its destruction has been a major blow to the country and to scientists everywhere, says Ellen Futter. She’s the president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “Brazil lost a big part of the record of its own history to the fire,” she says.