Zagros Paleolithic Museum is a museum in Kermanshah

Kermanshah

Kermanshah is a city in and the capital of Kermanshah Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 784,602, in 198,117 families.The overwhelming majority of Kermanshahi people are Shi'a Muslims...

, Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

, established in 2008.

The museum contains rich collections of stone tools and animal fossil bones from various Paleolithic

Paleolithic

The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...

 sites in Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. It is the first established museum in Iran that devoted to Paleolithic period of Iran.

The museum occupies four rooms with finds from various Paleolithic and Neolithic

Neolithic

The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...

 sites in Iran, dating from ca. 1,000,000 years to some 8000 years ago. The first room is audio room and there visitors can watch a documentary about prehistoric stone tools and how Paleolithic artisans made these tools. There is also is a full life-size model of a Neanderthal

Neanderthal

The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

 with substantially larger eyes than many such reconstructions.
The second room is dedicated to human and animal bones from Zagros sites and some human skull replicas from famous Paleolithic sites at Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 and Near East

Near East

The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...

. Among the faunal remains, the fossil collection from Wezmeh

Wezmeh

Wezmeh Cave is a paleontological and archaeological cave site near Islamabad Gharb, western Iran. The site was discovered by a team of Iranian archaeologists headed by Dr. Kamyar Abdi in 1999. Later the site was excavated in 2001 by the same team....

 Cave is of prime importance. The third room contains Lower Paleolithic

Lower Paleolithic

The Lower Paleolithic is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 2.5 million years ago when the first evidence of craft and use of stone tools by hominids appears in the current archaeological record, until around 300,000 years ago, spanning the...

 stone tools from various sites such as Kashafrud

Kashafrud

Kashafrud Basin is an archaeological site in Iran, known for the Lower Palaeolithic artifacts collected there; these are the oldest-known evidence for human occupation of Iran.,...

, Ganj Par

Ganj Par

Ganj Par is a Lower Paleolithic site located in the Gilan province in northern Iran.Located on an old western terrace of the Sefīd-Rūd River, the site was discovered by a team of archaeologists from the Center for Paleolithic Research of the National Museum of Iran in 2002.The Lower Paleolithic...

 and Shiwatoo. Among these stone tools two quartz

Quartz

Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...

 flakes from Kashafrud are of particular interest. The fourth room houses late Paleolithic and Neolithic stone tools, animal bones, shells and other archaeological objects which are mainly from sites at Zagros region. This museum was established by Fereidoun Biglari

Fereidoun Biglari

-Career:Fereidoun Biglari is co-founder and head of the Paleolithic department in National Museum of Iran which established in 2001. His field of research covers Lower Paleolithic of Iran and western Asia and Middle Paleolithic of Iran in general and Zagros region in particular...

 (National Museum of Iran) and A. Moradi Bisetouni (Iranian Cultural Heritage office at Kermanshah) at Tekieh Biglar Baigi, Kermanshah in 2007.Marjan Mashkour

Marjan Mashkour

Marjan Mashkour received her Ph.D. in zooarchaeology in Paris and currently is a member of CNRS. She is the first Iranian who is specialized in the field of zooarchaeology and has been engaged in many field and laboratory projects in Iran and Near East. Her research interest is late Paleolithic...

, Iranian zooarchaeologist, was in charge of animal fossil identification for this new museum.