What is the visit to the renovated dinosaur fossil museum in Chubut like?

The phenomenal impact caused by discovery of fossil remains of the largest dinosaur that has walked on Earth continues to resonate in Patagonia. In 2012, when a farmhand came across the first bone of the Patagotitan Mayorum in Chubut, the Egidio Feruglio Museum of Trelew began a renovation work on its facilities and equipment, which included the expansion to be able to display the scale replica of that 74-tonne mass, spread over a disproportionate body 37 meters long and 20 meters high.

The reconversion process has just ended in the best way: the museum reopened its doors on November 9 and a crowd driven by curiosity and the world-renowned reputation of the institution attended the event.

Now, in the exact center of the ground floor, around the indisputable central figure – the sauropod that became extinct during the Cretaceous, 101 million years ago – you can see a valuable collection of prehistoric terrestrial faunagigantic marine reptiles, carnivorous birds characterized as pterodáctilos and other large animals detected in the south of the country, such as the fearsome predator Tiranotitan from the Jurassic, the Tehuelchesaurus Benitezii and the Carnotaurus Sastrei.

Science, technology and the development of knowledge have a place in 16 thousand square meters covered.

The museum incorporated cutting-edge technology with scanning and 3D printing to apply to the reproduction of the specimens, the silent daily work carried out by a team of experienced paleontologists, blacksmiths, carpenters and plastic artists in the Scientific Studies Laboratory.

The two floors of the downtown building – built half a block from the legendary Trelew Touring Hotel, where the famous bandits Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid and Etta Place stayed more than a century ago – house the exhibition hall, a convention center with capacity for 850 people divisible into five smaller spaces, elevator and new escalators, an area for recreational-educational programs, the restored Germán Sopeña auditorium, the Dinoshop store and Feruglio Café.

The museum’s renewed profile also presents interactive projections, immersive sound, newly released scenery and the conversion of the site official websiteto facilitate the purchase of tickets and reservations for guides and services, a key procedure to be able to access this invaluable Cultural Heritage of the Nation, supported by a collection of almost 40 thousand pieces of paleobotany, vertebrates, invertebrates and footprints stamped by living organisms on sediments and rocks.

The Feruglio museum, inaugurated in 1990 in its first location – between the walls worn by the activity of an old furniture store – is an essential stopover of the eight thematic zones that are part of the Gondwana Valley, the suggestive tourist, geological and paleontological route. that cuts the valley of the Chubut River from the Cordillera to the Atlantic coast.

The circuit even extends to the coastal cliffs of Peninsula Valdés and Puerto Madryn, where, more than once, the steps of residents, tourists, anthropologists, paleontologists and geologists were hindered by the emergence of fossils of a species ancestor of the capybara, glyptodonts, armadillos, birds and freshwater fish.

The educational snapshot offered by the Feruglio Museum of the animals that populated the region for millions of years is expanded in the Bryn Gwin Paleontological Park.

To reach this open-air fossil reservoir, you must travel the first stretch of the route to the west that the pioneering Welsh immigrants traveled at the end of the 19th century and detour 8 kilometers south of Gaiman.

Between the folds of the steppe and the prosperous rural plots of the Lower Valley of the Chubut River, a path climbs a fence until reaching a succession of excavations, which allowed the discovery of a large number of remains of terrestrial mammals fixed on volcanic sediments for between 100 thousand. and 40 million years.

The natural landscape that frames the site outlines that lost world that the loose pieces of the museum rescue and reveal the replicas of dinosaurs, gigantographs and three-dimensional models that deliver the first impact to the eyes of the visitors who land at the Almirante Zar airport, the gateway to the unfathomable prehistory of the most desolate Patagonia.

• From the city of Buenos Aires to Trelew there are 1,358 kilometers along Ricchieri, the Cañuelas Highway and Route 3.

• Airlines fly direct from Aeroparque to Trelew (2 hours): round trip with taxes and fees, from $174,000.

• Option: Flybondi and Aerolíneas arrive in Puerto Madryn (60 km from Trelew), non-stop, in two hours: round trip, from $260,000.

• Cóndor Estrella semi-sleeper bus, Andesmar, Vía TAC or Vía Bariloche from Retiro to Trelew (9 p.m.), $99,000 one way; sleeper car, $113,000.

• In Trelew, Touring hotel: double room with breakfast, garage, wi-fi and cable TV, $55,000; triple, $80,000; quadruple, $95,000 (0280-443-3997/8 / 0280- 154538754 / hoteltouringclubtrelew@gmail.com / www.touringpatagonia.com.ar / Facebook: Hotel Touring Club).

• In Puerto Madryn, 4-star hotels with breakfast, cable TV and wi-fi in summer, from $130,000, double occupancy; 3 stars, from $90,000; 2 stars, from $60,000; inns and apartments, from $60,000; hostel, starting at $40,000 (www.madryn.travel).

Admission to the Egidio Feruglio Museum, $12,000; from 4 to 11 years old and retirees, $6,000. Open every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.