Wednesday, July 2, 2025

INAH opens Mexican paleontology exhibition in Mexico City

Forty-three paleontology discoveries and five fossil replicas from a variety of invertebrates and mammals went on display this week for the first time with the opening of a new exhibit in the National Museum of World Cultures in Mexico City.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History’s (INAH’s) Mexico Paleontology exhibition includes pieces dating back hundreds of millions of years, from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras to the late Pleistocene era (popularly referred to as the Ice Age), and ranging in size from two macrons to two meters long.

The exhibition’s goal is to bring the public closer to the field of paleontology and encourage people to participate in the conservation and protection of Mexico’s rich paleontological heritage.

Curators explained that paleontology is not a well-understood field in Mexican society, and many people draw limited associations with dinosaurs and woolly mammoths. To expand the public’s horizons, the exposition emphasizes the rigor of field work and presents basic information about the discipline, which also makes use of fossilized plants, eggs and footprints to draw conclusions about environmental conditions in the earth’s distant past and evolution.

The exhibition also comprises two presentations: one that explains the legal framework for investigation, protection, conservation and diffusion of paleontology in Mexico, and another dedicated to the Rincón Colorado in Coahuila, the first fossil site open to the public in Mexico, conceived by all three levels of government as a key educational tool.

Curators emphasized that local populations are often the first to stumble upon new fossil sites.

Museum employees said the first paleontological research in Mexico by the INAH was closely linked to investigations into the first humans on the American continent. Since then, the discipline has evolved into a rich practice of recovery, preservation, research and public education.

Mexico News Daily

Have something to say? Paid Subscribers get all access to make & read comments.
people releasing fish in shallow water

Environment Ministry releases 40,000 baby totoaba into the Gulf of California

0
The Environment Ministry, working with the private sector and civil society, has been conducting a repopulation project that included the recent release of 40,000 hatchlings.
crematorium in Ciudad Juárez

2 arrests made after 383 bodies found piled up at Ciudad Juárez crematorium

0
The crematorium, which had the permits to operate, was housing corpses for as long as five years and reportedly gave relatives of the deceased "other material" in place of ashes.
a person registering their fingerprints

Senate grants Security Ministry broad data access powers, sparking ‘police state’ fears

0
The federal government argues that the National Investigation and Intelligence System Law, popularly referred to as the "Spy Law," is required to bolster the state's capacity to combat organized crime.