On the night of September 2, 2018, a fire ravaged the National Museum of Brazil, devastating the country's oldest scientific institution and one of the largest and most important museums in South America. On Tuesday, the museum announced it has received a major donation of ancient Brazilian fossils to help rebuild its collection ahead of its 2026 reopening.
Burkhard Pohl, a Swiss-German collector and entrepreneur who maintains one of the largest private collections of fossils in the world, delivered approximately 1,100 specimens to the National Museum, all originating from Brazil. The donation represents the largest and most scientifically important contribution yet to the museum's reconstruction efforts, following the loss of 85 percent of its approximately 20 million specimens and artifacts in the fire.
The initiative also returns a scientific treasure to a country that has often seen its natural heritage disappear beyond its borders – and presents a potential global model for building a natural history museum in the 21st century.
“The most important thing is to show the world, in Brazil and outside Brazil, that we are uniting private individuals and public institutions,” said Alexander Kellner, director of the National Museum. “We want others to follow this example, if possible, to help us in this truly Herculean task.”
Much more than the public exhibitions they host, natural history museums safeguard the world's scientific and cultural heritage for future generations. The 2018 fire destroyed the National Museum's entire collection of insects and spiders, as well as Egyptian mummies purchased by Brazil's first imperial family.
The flames also consumed more than 60% of the museum's fossils, including parts of a specimen used by scientists to identify Maxakalisaurus, a long-necked Brazilian dinosaur. The newly donated fossils include plants, insects, two dinosaurs that may represent new species, and two exquisite skulls of pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that flew above the heads of dinosaurs. The donation also includes previously studied fossils, including the enigmatic reptile Tetrapodophis, which has been identified as a “four-legged snake” in 2015 but is now thought to be an aquatic lizard.
Dr Pohl, who comes from a family of art, mineral and fossil collectors, said his donations were intended to ensure that Brazil's national museum has a complete and accessible collection of the country's fossil heritage.
“A collection is an organism,” Dr. Pohl said in an interview. “If he's locked up, he's dead; he needs to live”.
The bones provide snapshots of life in what is now northeastern Brazil between 115 and 110 million years ago, when the region was a wetland dotted with lakes often inundated by a young and growing Atlantic Ocean. Over time, these ancient bodies of water gave rise to the Crato and Romualdo Formations, limestone deposits in the Araripe Basin where today quarries are dug for the raw material for the production of cement. Impeccably preserved fossils hide among the rocks, some of which were formed when the creatures' bodies were rapidly covered in microbial muck along ancient coastlines and then buried. Crato's fossils were crushed like pressed flowers; Romuald's fossils were buried in stone nodules.
Since 1942, Brazil has treated fossils as national property and strictly bans their commercial export. But for decades, Brazilian fossils from the Crato and Romualdo Formations have circulated in the global fossil market, sold in museums and private collections around the world, including that of Dr. Pohl.
Brazilian paleontologists, excited about the fossils' return to their home country, highlighted the research and education opportunities they represent and the positive precedent they could help set for other donors. “It's very positive to maybe show other collectors that things can be done in a friendly way,” said Taissa Rodrigues, a paleontologist at the Federal University of Espírito Santo in Brazil.
The seeds for Dr. Pohl's donation were planted in 2022, when Dr. Kellner met Frances Reynolds, the founder of a Brazilian nonprofit called Instituto Inclusartiz. She quickly embraced the mission of rebuilding the National Museum's collections, turning to a network of collectors to secure long-term loans and donations.
“If we can help and we don't, then I can't expect anything from anyone else,” Ms. Reynolds said. “It was a lot of work but an incredible experience.”
Ms Reynolds became aware of Dr Pohl's fossil collection through her son, who runs galleries owned by Dr Pohl's Interprospekt Group, a fossil and gem company based in Switzerland. A year of negotiations followed and the fossils were shipped to Brazil in 2023; they are housed in temporary structures until the main museum building is restored.
In addition to fossils, the National Museum is collaborating with the Interprospekt Group to conduct joint research across the United States. Last summer, a group of six Brazilian paleontologists and students traveled to Thermopolis, Wyoming, where Dr. Pohl runs a private fossil museum. There, the Brazilian team will help excavate fossils that could later become part of the National Museum's collections.
Dr. Kellner and Ms. Reynolds are actively soliciting donations and collaborations, and international institutions are answering the call. Last year, the Danish National Museum donated a red cloak of scarlet ibis feathers made by the Tupinambá people of Brazil, one of only 11 such artifacts left in the world. The museum is also working closely with indigenous groups in Brazil to reconstruct the museum's ethnographic collections.
“This could be a major turning point,” Dr. Kellner said. “It's really something for the future of our people.”
