Peru to Build Its First Paleontology Museum

LIMA – Peru's first paleontology museum - South America's third - will be built in the northern city of Trujillo to exhibit more than 800 fossils, the press reported Sunday.

The museum is expected to open at the end of this year and be housed in a 2,000 sq. meter (21,500 sq. foot) building, thanks to $140,000 in foreign aid, researcher Klaus Honninger Mitrani told the Lima daily La Primera.

Museum organizers received support from the Prehistoric Institute in Hanau, Germany, and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

"The agreement is done. People are coming from Germany and we'll send our people (from the National Culture Institute) so they can be trained abroad," Honninger said.

Fossil finds are constantly reported on Peru's north coast, in the southern desert and in the Amazon region.

Some of the fossils are on display in the paleontology section of the old Natural History Museum at the University of San Marcos in Lima. EFE