Pterosaurs
Fossil flying reptiles.
Allan Patrick from Mossoró, Brasil — CC BY-SA 2.0 · User:Emidio RodriguesIEmidio Rodrigues — Public domain · Allan Patrick aka allanpatrick on Flickr — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Allan Patrick from Mossoró, Brasil — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Allan Patrick from Mossoró, Brasil — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Allan Patrick from Mossoró, Brasil — CC BY-SA 2.0
The Plácido Cidade Nuvens Paleontology Museum in Santana do Cariri, nicknamed Brazil's national capital of palaeontology, is the largest palaeontology museum in Ceará, with more than eleven thousand pieces, and belongs to the Regional University of Cariri. The town lies in an area that preserves one of the world's great concentrations of fossils, dating back some 110 million years to the Cretaceous. It was founded by law in April 1985 by the mayor and teacher Plácido Cidade Nuvens, who had watched local people collect and sell fossils and foreigners buy land to dig them out. Since it opened in July 1988 the museum has been a pillar in the fight against fossil trafficking and the protection of this heritage, and the university formally took it over in 1991. Its rooms show fossil fish, insects and plants, and remains of the pterosaurs, the flying reptiles for which the region is famous, and it welcomes around ten thousand visitors a year. It is part of the Araripe Geopark and is best reached by car from Crato or Juazeiro do Norte.
Fossil flying reptiles.
From the Cretaceous.
Against fossil trafficking.
Central Santana do Cariri, southern Ceará
About an hour's drive west of Crato.