Fire guts 200-year-old National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro

View of the entrance of Rio de Janeiro’s treasured National Museum, one of Brazil’s oldest, a day after a massive fire ripped through the building.

A researcher gestures as they try to salvage artifacts from the debris a day after a massive fire ripped through Rio de Janeiro’s treasured National Museum.

A National Museum worker carries away a piece rescued from the museum after an overnight fire in Rio de Janeiro.

File photo taken in 2008 of palaeontologists showing a model of a flying reptile named Nemicolopterus crypticus at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. The toothless flying reptile lived in gingko forests that existed some 120 million years ago in present-day China.

View of pieces on display at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 9, 2017. A massive fire ripped through Rio de Janeiro’s treasured National Museum, one of Brazil’s oldest, in what the nation’s president said was a “tragic” loss of knowledge and heritage.

View of a piece on display at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 9, 2017. A massive fire ripped through Rio de Janeiro’s treasured National Museum, one of Brazil’s oldest, in what the nation’s president said was a “tragic” loss of knowledge and heritage.

View of pieces on display at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 9, 2017.

View of pieces on display at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro on Oct. 9, 2017.

A May 14, 2009, photo of a paleontologist working on the skeleton of an Angaturama limai -a spinosaurus dinosaur- carrying the skeleton of an anhanguerid pterosaur, at the National Museum of History in Rio de Janeiro.