One night was all it took to ravage millions of specimens— and countless years of scientific research — as a massive fire broke out just after closing time at Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. A fire ravaged the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday night. Visual: Buda Mendes/Getty Images While no deaths were reported, most the museum’s 20 million artifacts are thought to have been damaged or destroyed, including the skull of Luzia, believed to be the oldest human remains ever found in the Americas. As the 200-year-old institution burned, scientists, including the museum’s deputy director, entered the building to salvage what little they could, though most likely lost entire collections crucial to their work. “In terms of [my] life-long research agenda, I’m pretty much lost,” Marcus Guidoti, an entomologist finishing his Ph.D., told National Geographic. Guidoti had been studying lace bugs, one of the largest collections of which was housed at the museum. Though reeling from the devastating loss, museum workers said they knew the fire would happen someday. “Everybody here knew that,” Marcelo Weksler, one of the exhibit curators, told The New York Times. “It was our worst nightmare.” In July, an architect had filed a complaint, highlighting hazards including unsafe wiring and the use of flammable materials on the building’s roof. “This unique collection in Brazil can catch fire at any moment, and it is a miracle it hasn’t happened yet,” the author of the complaint wrote. Just a month before that, after years of negotiation, the museum had secured $5 million in funding for a new fire safety system. It had yet to be installed when this week’s fire began. Battling the flames for more than six hours, firefighters said the hydrants outside the building were empty, reflecting the breakdown in infrastructure and management that many blamed on the government. Museum director Alexander Kellner said the museum has struggled to stay afloat following budget cuts in 2014, though local news outlets report that the issues stem back to the 1950s. While the country’s culture minister deflected blame and called on Kellner to resign, a group from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, are set to arrive in Brazil next week to assess what pieces may be recovered. Also in the news: • Panic set in on Wednesday, as news came that 100 people on a flight from Dubai to New York had come down with flu-like symptoms. The plane was met upon arrival by ambulances — a scene documented on Twitter by the rapper Vanilla Ice — and 11 people were taken to the hospital for treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were notified and a spokesman later said the sick were likely suffering from influenza or the common cold. One passenger, Erin Sykes, reported that those boarding the plane were sick before they took off from Dubai. Some of the passengers were returning from Saudi Arabia, where they had participated in the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Just one day later, two American Airlines flights were held after arriving in Philadelphia, after 12 people came down with similar symptoms. While those flights came from Paris and Munich, respectively, the sick passengers were also believed to have been in Mecca. As a precaution, health officials said they were looking into the possibility of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, but so far tests have come back negative. (Vox, NBC News) • While brick kiln operations represent just 1 percent of Bangladesh’s GDP, the industry generates nearly 60 percent of the particulate pollution hanging over the capital city of Dhaka. This often translates into noxious clouds of PM2.5 — the most deadly category of air pollution, given its diminutives size (2.5 micrometers or less in diameter) and its ability to slip past the body’s defenses and burrow deep into the respiratory system. Exposure to PM2.5 has been linked to lung cancer and other health problems, and at least one study has suggested that this sort of fine particulate pollution claimed 14,000 lives in Greater Dhaka in 2014. Two years later, researchers estimated that it was responsible for the deaths of more than 100,000 Bangladeshis nationwide. An Undark report this week noted that cleaner brickmaking technology is slowly making its way to Bangladesh, but the economics are forbidding — particularly for a developing nation where jobs are precious and resources are scarce. “My furniture gets covered in a layer of dust particles within a few hours of cleaning it,” said one North Dhaka homemaker, “and this makes me alarmed thinking how much of the dust is settling in my lungs.” (Undark) • The saga of the mystery sickness at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba continues. After news emerged last year that more than a dozen American diplomats in Havana had suddenly suffered hearing damage and concussion-like symptoms, scientists were baffled. Many experts suspected a stealth sonic attack by Russia-friendly operatives, and the incident created a diplomatic rift between Havana and Washington. Now neuroscientist Douglas Smith, director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania and head of a medical team that examined the affected diplomats, has fingered a new leading suspect: microwave beams, which experts say can create false sensations that plausibly explain the diplomats’ symptoms. “Everybody was relatively skeptical at first, and everyone now agrees there’s something there,” Smith told The New York Times. Still, some scientists say that the microwave theory makes no sense. “The microwave auditory effect is a real stretch,” bioengineer Kenneth Foster, also of the University of Pennsylvania, told BuzzFeed News. “It is a biologically trivial effect.” The State Department continues to investigate the incident and says it has yet to identify the cause or source of the attacks. (The New York Times, BuzzFeed News.) • Worried that the Trump administration might make good on threats to deny permanent legal status to immigrants who have accessed public assistance, many have begun asking to be removed from the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, which helps ensure pregnant women, infants, and small children receive adequate nutrition.<doc-sep>More than 20 million items were at risk in a fire at the National Museum of Brazil, a staggering cultural toll that includes prehistoric fossils and rare pieces dating back several millenniums. It was not immediately known how many artifacts, if any, were salvaged from the fire, which engulfed the museum on Sunday night, to the despair of Brazilians and history lovers worldwide. The museum, which opened in 1818, held an extensive collection of Brazilian artifacts, but also featured items from around the globe. Here is a small selection of some of its more notable items: • One of the world’s largest meteorites, which was found in 1784 and had been on display since 1888. • Fossils from the oldest human remains found in the region, known as Luzia, and from dinosaurs and other creatures. • An Egyptian collection that included a coffin from the 11th century B.C., a mummified cat and a collection of masks, vases, amulets and statues, like one of a young Egyptian woman from about 1500 B.C.<doc-sep>By Marcelo Silva de Sousa and Mauricio Savarese | Associated Press RIO DE JANEIRO — Firefighters found bone fragments from a collection in the still-smoldering National Museum, an official said Tuesday, raising hopes that a famed skull might somehow have survived a massive blaze that turned historic and scientific artifacts to ashes. Flames tore through the museum Sunday night, and officials have said much of Latin America’s largest collection of treasures might be lost. Aerial photos of main building showed only heaps of rubble and ashes in the parts of the building where the roof collapsed. Start your day with the news you need from the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our Morning Report weekday newsletter. The firefighters “found fragments of bones in a room where the museum kept many items, including skulls,” said Cristiana Serejo, the museum’s vice director. “We still have to collect them and take them to the lab to know exactly what they are.” In its collection of about 20 million items, one of the most prized possessions is a skull called Luzia, which is among the oldest fossils ever found in the Americas. Museum spokesman Marcio Martins noted that the collection contains hundreds of skulls, and all material would first need to be examined by the Federal Police, who are investigating the still-unknown cause of the fire. Experts will then examine them to determine their identity. Many have already said that regardless of what is salvaged, the loss will be immeasurable. Marina Silva, a candidate for president in upcoming elections, called it a “lobotomy of Brazilian history.” The Globo newspaper wrote in an editorial published Tuesday: “The size of the catastrophe is vast: It struck the national memory, through the loss of the important historical collection; it affected the sciences, interrupting research; and it represents a cultural loss impossible to quantify. We only know that it is enormous.” Investigators were first allowed to enter the main building Monday, but it is still off-limits to researchers. Instead, some scientists were focusing attention on an annex on the site, where vertebrate specimens were housed. The fire didn’t reach the area, but it caused the electricity to fail, threatening some artifacts, said Marcelo Wexler, a researcher in the vertebrate department. “We have animals that need to be frozen, and they were rotting without electricity,” Wexler said. In a sign of the enormity of the task ahead, a museum security guard created a stir when he arrived on the scene carrying a document he said belonged to the institution that he had found across the street. “I came here to give it back. I am sure there is much more that flew around,” Felipe Silva told a group of journalists who crowded in to see the document, which he put in a clear plastic folder. Even as efforts turned to searching the rubble, firefighters were still occasionally directing water at the building, where some embers were still burning. Eduardo Rosse, a fire official, said that was normal for a blaze of this size. Luiz Fernando Dias Duarte, a museum official, said Monday that anything held in the main building was probably destroyed, and Serejo told the G1 news portal that 90 percent of the collection may have been destroyed. But on Tuesday, she held out some hope, telling journalists that staff members were “reasonably optimistic about finding some more items inside.” She added that UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural agency, had offered financial and technical assistance. French and Egyptian officials also have offered help. The museum was home to Egyptian artifacts, and Egypt’s ministries of foreign affairs and antiquities have expressed concern over the fate of those objects. With the cause still under investigation, many already have begun to fix blame, saying years of government neglect left the museum underfunded and unsafe. Roberto Leher, rector of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, to which the museum was linked, said it was well known that the building was vulnerable to fire and in need of extensive repair. In fact, the institution had recently secured approval for nearly $5 million for a planned renovation, including an upgrade of the fire-prevention system, but the money had not yet been disbursed. On Monday, government officials promised $2.4 million to shore up the building and promised to rebuild the museum. Associated Press writer Hamza Hendawi contributed from Cairo.<doc-sep>The full extent of the damage caused to artefacts by the devastating fire at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro will take some time to emerge. A spokesman for the fire brigade told Globo News: “We were able to remove a lot of things from inside with the help of workers of the museum,” leading to hopes that at least some of the collection may have survived. Pictures surfaced on social media showing people carrying small items out of the burning building. Below are some of the scientific and historical highlights of a collection of over 20m items, whose loss was described as “incalculable” by Brazil’s president, Michel Temer. Luzia Woman Luzia Woman is an upper paleolithic period skeleton that was found in a cave in Brazil in 1975 by the French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire. At about 11,500 years old, she was believed to be the oldest human skeleton found in the Americas. The 11,500-year-old skull of the Luzia Woman, the oldest skull to be discovered on the American continent. Photograph: BBC TWO Debate has raged about her origins, with some anthropologists suggesting the skull showed signs that Luzia’s ancestors had come to the continent from south-east Asia. She would have stood at just under five feet tall. In 2010, scientists reconstructed how her face may have looked in real life. The head of the Luzia Woman reconstructed. Mummified remains Donated to Emperor Dom Pedro II, the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, the museum’s collection included a rare Brazilian example of mummified bodies, belonging to a woman and two children. The woman, found in Goianá, was aged about 25, and died 600 years before Europeans arrived on the continent. The museum also held mummified or shrunken heads produced in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin by the Shuar people. In the heavily ritualised processes, the skull was removed while leaving the skin and hair intact. The Egyptian coffin of Sha-Amun-em-su. Photograph: Creative Commons From further afield, the museum was also home to 700 items from Egypt, including the coffin of Sha-Amun-em-su, an unopened wooden painted coffin from Thebes, dated to around 750BC. X-rays of the item show that as well as the body, there are amulets still intact inside the casket. Other Egyptian relics in the museum included the 3,000-year-old coffin of the priest Hori and a mummified cat. Indigenous art and artefacts Established in 1818, the museum’s collection preserved irreplaceable art and objects from Brazil’s indigenous peoples. They tell the tale not just of the people who lived on the continent, but of how they were encountered and occupied by European colonists. Some of the items in the museum were collected when Marshal Rondon was driving telegraph lines and roads through the Amazon basin in the early 20th century. As well as collecting weapons, the Rondon Commission also collected musical instruments, and in 1912 the anthropologist Edgar Roquette-Pinto, who accompanied them, made the first recordings of indigenous music on wax cylinders. From contemporary native populations the museum held striking feather art by the Karajás people, as well as examples of their ceramics. Only about 3,000 of the Karajás survive, living in a few dozen villages in central Brazil. Chilean mummy at the Museu Nacional in Rio. Photograph: Picasa/Creative Commons The collection included a total of about 1,800 artefacts from the pre-Colombian era, including pieces from Andean cultures such as the Inca, Chancay and Nazca civilisations that illustrated textile and ceramic manufacture, and evidence of trading behaviour. A mummy of a Chilean man estimated to be at least 3,500 years old gave an insight into how people were buried – in this case in a seated position with the knees raised up to the chin. The museum’s director, Alexander Kellner, said of the fire: “It is a pitiful tragedy. Inside it there are delicate and inflammable pieces, a fabulous library. The collection of the museum is not for the history of Rio de Janeiro or Brazil, it is fundamental to world history.” Bendegó meteorite The Bendegó meteorite, at 5,260kg, was the biggest iron meteorite found on Brazilian soil, and at one point the second largest ever found in the world. It was discovered in 1784 in Monte Santo, Bahia by a boy, and is one of the largest such items ever to be transported. Bendegó meteorite, as it appeared on display in the National Museum before the fire Photograph: Jorge Andrade Frescoes from Pompeii Frescoes that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius were also in the museum’s collection, including one depicting two peacocks perched on stylised chandeliers, and two others featuring seahorses, a dragon, and dolphins, which originally adorned the Temple of Isis in Pompeii. With 750 pieces from Mediterranean culture in the collection, it was the largest grouping of such artefacts in Latin America. A fossilised turtle from the collection. Photograph: Museu Nacional Brasil Fossil records Described as “a palaeontological paradise of international significance”, the Sertão region of Brazil has been particularly rich in fossils, enriching the museum with a large collection. Fossilised turtles from 110m years ago that were in the collection are the oldest found in the country. The Angaturama limai dinosaur in the collection was also discovered in Brazil. The name is derived from the indigenous Tupi language, and is a tribute to the Brazilian palaeontologist Murilo Rodolfo de Lima, although there is some debate as to whether the fossil belongs to a previously identified species, the Irritator challengeri. The Angaturama limai skeleton. Photograph: Museu Nacional Brasil The creature was a fish-eating type of carnivore with a “sail” along their back. These fossils have close relatives in African fossil deposits, supporting the theory the continents of South America and Africa were linked. The specimen was the first large Brazilian carnivorous dinosaur to be displayed. The display of the Maxakalisaurus topai dinosaur at the museum. Photograph: Vanderlei Almeida/AFP Also on display was a replica of a Maxakalisaurus topai dinosaur skeleton – the largest scientifically identified sauropod found in Brazil.<doc-sep>
The National Museum of Brazil in Rio. HALLEY PACHECO DE OLIVEIRA/WIKIMEDIA On Sunday evening in Rio de Janeiro, after visiting hours, a major fire broke out in the National Museum of Brazil, which houses a vast array of items related to natural history and other disciplines, according to the Rio Times, Reuters, and numerous other outlets. As of Tuesday morning, The Guardian reported, officials were warning that the fire may have destroyed as much as 90 percent of the collection of institution, which was founded in 1818. The Rio Times said that the fire had consumed the entire structure, which is located in the city’s Quinta da Boa Vista park. (A running list of reports on the fire and its aftermath follow at the end of this story.) The museum houses a sprawling collection that includes artifacts and specimens related to botany, paleontology, geology, and archaeology, from ancient Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere, as well as a large scientific library. In total, it reportedly holds some 20 million objects. Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, wrote in Portuguese on Twitter, that the event marked “a sad day for all Brazilians,” according to the New York Times, and that “the loss of the National Museum collection is incalculable for Brazil.” The Times noted that the oldest human fossil from the region, of a woman referred to Luzia, is also part of the museum’s holdings. The vice-director for the museum, Luiz Duarte, said in an interview with a local outlet on Sunday night, according to Reuters, that the museum had been poorly funded for years, and that its leadership had recently worked out a deal with a state development bank “for a massive investment, so that we could finally restore the palace and, ironically, we had planned on a new fire prevention system.” The museum is housed in the Paço de São Cristóvão, which was home to the Brazilian imperial family for much of the 19th century. It moved into the building shortly after the monarchy was deposed in 1889 in a coup d’état that transitioned the country into a republic. Updates – The Guardian: The cause of the fire was not yet known on Tuesday morning, and investigators were waiting for structural tests to be completed before entering the building. – CNN: On Monday, “protesters took to the street following reports linking the fire with government spending cuts and inadequate maintenance of key infrastructure, including the building’s sprinkler system. – Al Jazeera: Police used tear gas to prevent protesters from entering the burned-out museum. – The New York Times: It’s not yet known which artifacts were destroyed in the blaze, but highlights of the collection included 700 Greco-Roman artifacts, objects that once belonged to Indigenous groups in the country, one of the world’s largest meteorites, and a large bird collection. – The Rio Times: Shortly after the fire started, museum staffers convened at the museum and tried to bring some particularly important pieces, like 40,000 mollusk specimens, to safety. The extent of the rescue operation is not yet clear. Also, officials believe protective casing on some objects may have been able to withstand the fire.