Credit: Leandro Mathiello
The Eduardo Galvão Exhibition Center, in the Zoobotanical Park of the Emílio Goeldi Paraense Museum, in Belém, will host one of the most innovative exhibitions ever held in the region starting on August 30: "Living Fossil". Combining science, technology and the richness of the natural history of the Amazon, the exhibition aims to transport visitors back 20 million years, when part of the region was formed by a predominantly marine environment inhabited by animals that are now extinct. "Living Fossil", which is sponsored by the Vale Cultural Institute, through the Rouanet Law, will be open to visitors until December 2024.
Curated by social scientist and filmmaker Adriano Espínola Filho, the exhibition focuses on fossils from two different contexts: in the first session, the public will learn about animals from the geological unit known as the Pirabas Formation, from the Miocene epoch, a period in which the advance of the sea covered a portion of the Amazon basin, through augmented reality technology; and in the second session, through virtual reality, the animals of the Megafauna, from the Pleistocene.
"One of the objectives of the exhibition in the first part is to tell visitors a story that is still little known to the public: the period when the Amazon was sea. In the second part, there will be an experience with animals from the Brazilian Megafauna, which became extinct around 11 thousand years ago. Visitors will be able to interact with these enormous animals, which, in fact, lived alongside humans for thousands of years, but due to climate change, adaptations and other factors, they ended up becoming extinct", explains Adriano.
Held in partnership with the Goeldi Museum and sponsored by the Vale Cultural Institute, the exhibition also seeks to highlight the research work carried out by the institution's paleontologists, “who are ultimately responsible for bringing all this knowledge to light, that is, making it come alive,” adds the curator.
Fossils collected in Pará
The fossils depicted in the exhibition are safeguarded in the Paleontological Collection of the Goeldi Museum and serve as material for several studies on the paleoenvironmental history of the Amazon. They were collected at paleontological sites in the Pará municipalities of Salinópolis, Capanema, São João de Pirabas and Itaituba, and meticulously studied and catalogued by researchers from the research institution. The species reflect the biodiversity of the region and help to reconstruct the natural environment of the past and the consequences of climate change that affected the Amazon.
“The exhibition will be of fundamental importance for the dissemination and visibility of an area within the Geosciences, Paleontology, which is still little known in our region. In this way, we will expand the dissemination of knowledge about fossils to the public in a more playful way. For Goeldi, it will be an incredible opportunity to strengthen its identification as a Natural History museum, which goes beyond current biodiversity, rescuing the history of life and environments from the past of the Amazon”, says Dr. Maria Inês Fejós Ramos, curator of the Paleontological Collection at the Emílio Goeldi Museum.
The species that are part of the exhibition are Galeocerdo mayumbensis (shark); Portunus of Haiti (siri); Clypeaster lamegoi (beach biscuit); Aetomylaeus cubensis (fish); Cypraea macrovoluta (gastropod); and the animals of the Megafauna: Notiomastodon; Xenorhinotherium; Glyptodon; and Eremotherium. The fossils were collected from surface outcrops or from mines excavated by paleontologists. After collection, the material was taken to the laboratory, where it was treated, cleaned, catalogued and studied. They are used for scientific research and also in educational events, such as workshops and science exhibitions.
“The idea is to present the fossils of an important stratigraphic unit, the Pirabas Formation, since it represents a great diversity, mainly of the coastal fauna of the state of Pará, from 23 million years before the present. It also brings to light the history of the establishment of the Amazon River, whose influence on the eastern Amazon coast, in the past, was very different from what it is today. In relation to the Megafauna, it portrays a more recent remote time, the Pleistocene, when the Homosapiens it already existed and would have lived with it”, explains Maria Inês.
In addition to the fossilized pieces, the exhibition will feature audiovisual resources, including three mini-documentaries recorded in Salinópolis and at the Goeldi Museum Research Campus, in Belém, which show the work of paleontologists and the process of excavating, identifying, cataloging and studying fossils, which can also result in the identification of new species.