100 million year old fossil brought back from Italy donated to Brazilian museum

RIO DE JANEIRO. – Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry announced on Tuesday that Santana de Carrie fossils will be donated to the museumIn the northeast of poor Brazil, a fish fossil more than 100 million years old from that rich paleontological area and brought back after being located in Italy.

Important historical work will be distributed Museum by Public Ministry onlyThe author of a judicial process that opened in 2020 and that allowed the fossil to be returned by Italian authorities, where it was offered for sale on an Internet portal for $3,000.

Starting this Wednesday, When fossils will be handed over to museum administratorsThe piece will form part of the collection of the Santana de Caryri Fossil Museum, which is administered by the Regional University of Caryri (Urca) and recognized by UNESCO as the first geopark in the Americas, the public ministry said in a statement.

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Fossil fish, secretly removed from Brazil and which were illegally traded in Italy, belong to the Cretaceous period and were found in the so-called Chapada do Araripi, an important paleontological area in Carrari, a municipality in the interior of the state of Serra.

“The recovered artifacts belong to the Santana Fossil Formation Group, one of the world’s main paleontological sites and recognized as one of the fossil deposits with the greatest diversity of exceptionally preserved material,” the note states. .

According to the Ministry of Public Affairs, the preservation of the fragments is such that in transplanted fossils “It is possible to notice the richness of the details of the tissues and even the scales of the fish”.
The fossil arrived in Brazil in March following the efforts of the Secretariat for International Cooperation of the Public Ministry.

,This is the heritage of Brazil which was secretly abroad and has great scientific, archaeological and financial importance. Its repatriation will allow Brazilian and international researchers to study it and see it in a museum by the Brazilian public,” said Rafael Reyol, the attorney general responsible for the case.

The prosecutor recalled that the commercialization of important Brazilian fossils abroad has become a common practice after illegal withdrawal from the country and that the public ministry faced authorities in Italy, France, Germany, the Netherlands to try to recover many Dozens of procedures have been filed. , Spain, Japan and South Korea.

He said that in most of the identified cases, illegal sales are condemned by investigators, who find them at auctions, private collections and even in museums.
In May last year, French justice, at the request of the public ministry, ordered Brazil to return 998 fossils that had been illegally removed from the country, including a nearly complete dinosaur skeleton.

Materials found in France are worth about 2.5 million reais (about $500,000) because they are rare fossils of scientific interest and because of their high level of conservation.

Among the fossils confiscated in Harvey’s harbor in 2013 is the skeleton of a pterosaur, but also sea turtles, arachnids, fish, reptiles, insects and plants, some millions of years old, that will also be handed over to the Geopark. Why Arap?

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