A fire that destroyed the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro consumed a number of rare and historic artifacts.
The fire broke out Sunday night and sent flames towering into the sky of Brazil鈥檚 second-largest city. There were no reports of injuries.
Firefighters worked with museum employees to try to save as many of the museum鈥檚 ancients artifacts as possible.
While it is unclear exactly how successful those efforts were and which pieces may have been saved, the museum housed more than 20 million items highlighting the history of Brazil and other countries.
We鈥檝e put together a look at some of the notable items contained in the collection of the 200-year-old museum.
This skull belongs to the oldest skeleton ever found in the Americas, commonly known as Luzia. Luzia is believed to have lived between 11,000 and 11,500 years ago and may have been part of the first wave of immigrants to South America from Asia.
This sarcophagus contains the mummy of Sha-amun-en-su, the 鈥淪inger of Amun鈥� who lived in Egypt in approximately 750 BC. It was presented to Pedro II, Brazil鈥檚 second emperor, during his 1876 visit to Egypt. Pedro II kept it in his office until he was removed from power in a coup d鈥檈tat 13 years later.
Close relatives of dinosaurs, pterosaurs are flying reptiles which lived during the Triassic and Cretaceous periods. The skeleton of this particular pterosaur was discovered during an archeological excavation in Brazil.
The museum鈥檚 collection features more than 65,000 fossils. This is a one-metre-long reconstruction of a trilobite, one of the earliest known groups of fossils. Related to insects and crustaceans, trilobites lived in Brazil approximately 400 million years ago.
Dating back approximately 110 million years, this is the oldest known fossil of a turtle in all of Brazil.
This fragment of the Angra dos Reis meteorite fell to Earth in front of a Brazilian church in 1869. Its discovery gave rise to the term angrite, which is used to describe a certain type of meteorite considered to be among the oldest rocks in the solar system.
Not all artifacts at the museum are Brazilian. This mummified cat is part of its large Egyptian collection, which the museum calls one of the largest in South America. It is believed to date to the first century BC.
This throne belonged to rulers of the kingdom of Dahomey, an African kingdom which existed from the 17th through 19th centuries in part of what is now Benin.
Pictured here is a pitcher created sometime between 900 and 1400 BC in what is now Peru. It has a human face carved into its top and given brown face paint.
While the museum鈥檚 traditional focus is on history, it also finds room for exhibits on subjects including anthropology, paleontology and zoology. This pufferfish is part of an exhibit looking at the importance of Brazil鈥檚 coral reefs.
