Conserving Pre-Historic Heritage: India’s First Natural History Museum To Come Up Near Delhi

In order to conserve the vast treasury of geological and paleontology related specimens that are scattered in different labs all over India, the government is planning to house them in one place - an ‘Earth Museum’, reports The Hindu.

According to the report, this museum will be modeled on either the American Museum of Natural History or the Smithsonian, both in United States. It will be set up as a public-private partnership (PPP) and would be located somewhere in Delhi, Gurugram or Noida, the report cited head of geology department, Delhi University, GVR Prasad as saying.

At a press conference on Wednesday (6 March), Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to Prime Minister K Vijay Raghavan reportedly emphasized on the need of such repository to make people aware of India’s geological and paleontological weatlh.

K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Prime Minister, said at a press conference on Wednesday that such a repository was necessary to make people aware of India’s palaeontological and geological wealth.

“There is a lot of history here, but somehow it hasn’t been communicated well,” he said, as reported by The Hindu. He said a single site, accessible to the public as well as researchers wanting to investigate rare and important finds, was necessary.

As per the report, earlier, in November, the PSA led a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council (PM-STIAC), where the need for such a museum was endorsed.