The Desert Museum is a museum in

Saltillo, Coahuila Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and hig ...

, that promotes an ecological culture. It was designed by the architect Francisco López Guerra and was inaugurated on 25 November 1999. It has a large collection of fossils and plants and includes autochthonous animals of the Mexican desert.

History

The Museum of the Desert was inaugurated on 25 November 1999 by then-President

Ernesto Zedillo Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León (; born 27 December 1951) is a Mexican economist and politician. He was 61st president of Mexico from 1 December 1994 to 30 November 2000, as the last of the uninterrupted 71-year line of Mexican presidents from t ...

and also the directors of the Amigos del Desierto de Coahuila foundation. The project was intended to promote an ecological culture by showing the wealth of life and the evolution of species through time in an interactive way. The project was conceived in the 90's when they began to make important discoveries in the area of about the

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ear ...

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...

palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

in the region, as part of a collaboration in all these work areas.

Pavilions

The museum is divided into four main pavilions with different themes.

The desert and its past

Due to factors such as erosion, the different geological structures have made it a been a bit simpler to discover fossils in the Mexican deserts which have helped to comprise more on these forms of life. The collections and exhibitions shown in this pavilion explore the origins of deserts. Also it is possible to appreciate the mineral wealth where the coal is the main mineral that is extracted in this region. Also the museum features dinosaurs which lived in the region: Isauria, Sabinasaurio,

Quetzalcoatlus ''Quetzalcoatlus'' is a genus of pterosaur known from the Late Cretaceous period of North America (Maastrichtian stage); its members were among the largest known flying animals of all time. ''Quetzalcoatlus'' is a member of the Azhdarchidae, ...

and a

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...

17 meters long and five meters high, as well as interactive displays about recent discoveries in the

of the region

Man and the desert: A space of meetings

This pavilion shows mainly the habits and rituals of the nomads who lived in this region. It is possible to appreciate the

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s and rupestrian paintings, which are very characteristic of this area.

Evolution and biodiversity

This pavilion in particular, was inaugurated on 4 August of the 2005. What shows us here are the traces of the evolution along the last 12 one thousand years, as during this period the biodiversity in this region, that has witnessed

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

Saber-toothed cat Machairodontinae is an extinct subfamily of carnivoran mammals of the family Felidae (true cats). They were found in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, and Europe from the Miocene to the Pleistocene, living from about 16 million until ...

Short-faced bear The Tremarctinae or short-faced bears is a subfamily of Ursidae that contains one living representative, the spectacled bear (''Tremarctos ornatus'') of South America, and several extinct species from four genera: the Florida spectacled bear ('' ...

s and

Gomphothere Gomphotheres are any members of the diverse, extinct taxonomic family Gomphotheriidae. Gomphotheres were elephant-like proboscideans, but do not belong to the family Elephantidae. They were widespread across Afro-Eurasia and North America during ...

The laboratory of life

This interactive pavilion traces 70 million years backwards, showing the greater quantity of fauna through a biodomo doing that the experience of the visitors was only. Also it has a laboratory of

Herpetology Herpetology (from Greek ἑρπετόν ''herpetón'', meaning "reptile" or "creeping animal") is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians (including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and caecilians (gymnophiona)) and rept ...

in where the specialists work with the reptiles that have in the museum.

References

{{coord, 25.414037, -100.963744, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:MX, display=title Mexican culture Museums in Mexico Cultural infrastructure completed in 1999 1999 establishments in Mexico