Keeping old giants at the service of a local community: the Arroyo del Vizcaíno collection (Sauce, Uruguay)

Abstract

The Arroyo del Vizcaíno collection began informally in 1997, when a group of high school students, teachers and other members of the community extracted around 300 bones from the Vizcaíno stream. Efforts were made by the students to prepare, catalogue and identify the remains, as well as to try to keep the remains in their hometown. The collection was housed at the local high school for many years until we obtained the permits to excavate the site and reunited the fossils collected in 1997 with those extracted in subsequent years. Since then the collection has grown substantially, with more than 1,800 fossils collected to date. The collection was moved several times, but in 2018 a new collaboration with the local high school meant the fossils could return there, but to new spaces, specially designed and built for them. These new spaces allow for better care of the remains and for the development of outreach activities with the community. The team of palaeontologists, students and designers involved in the project has developed didactic and educational resources both in physical and digital form, which have expanded the mission of the team to other localities within Uruguay. Today, the collection has been formally recognized as part of the Universidad de la República, a milestone that will translate into further collaborations with other institutions and members of the community. These past 10 years, the team has improved the conservation of the remains, generated academic publications and established relationships with local residents, hoping to help regain the sense of belonging and enthusiasm for fossils that the community felt in 1997.