Extinct animals to be featured at Gaziantep museum

GAZİANTEP – Anadolu Agency

The Zoology and Nature Museum at the Gaziantep Zoo, due to open in April, will introduce visitors to the extinct animal species that lived millions years ago as well as the wild ones currently in nature. 

The construction of the museum started two years ago within the body of the Gaziantep Zoo, which is Turkey’s biggest zoo with 7,500 animals of 330 species. It will be completed soon and the museum is set to open on April 23. 

The museum will be home to the animated skeletons of many animals, from a 4.5-meter-long mammoth that lived in 1,700 B.C. to the ancestor of whales dating back 33 million years, dorudan. It will range from the king of the dinosaurs, the tyrannosaurus rex, to the reptile dimetrodon dating back 10,000 years, as well as stuffed wild animals. 

Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality Natural Life Protection Department official Celal Özsöyler said that for the first time in Turkey a zoology museum would be opened at a zoo. 

He said that 700 animals would be shown in the museum. 

“When planning this museum, we brought animals that had died in zoos in Turkey or abroad. After some work, we will display them in the museum. The most important feature is that they were made without hurting any animal. The animals here have been designed according to their dietary patterns and hunting styles in nature,” Özsöyler added.

He also said the museum would feature animated renderings of the skeletons of many extinct animals.
 
“These will draw particular attention among visitors. The number of visitors to the zoo is increasing every day and the opening of the museum will further increase this number,” Özsöyler said.