Lucknow, May 16 : A natural history museum is coming up in Uttar Pradesh on the Lucknow Zoo campus and is expected to be ready by March 2023. The museum will offer information on birds and animals that existed millions of years ago and species that are extinct or endangered. The museum will be the first-of-its-kind in Uttar Pradesh and will have nearly 6,000 specimens of animals and birds collected by experts over the past 200 years from different places across the world. This collection has been lying in state museum for a long time due to lack of space in the Natural History Gallery of the museum. It is only now that work to construct a separate museum for natural history has begun and will be completed in 10 months. Though, Rs 22 lakh was approved for the three-storeyed museum building and sanctioned in the 2019-20 state budget, the project got delayed owing to Covid-19. According to the official spokesman, the museum will have five galleries showcasing specimens of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds and aquatic animals in the form of dummies. Besides, skins, eggs, fossils and skeletons will be on display. Visitors will be able to learn about animals that are now extinct, near extinction, rare, critically endangered or endangered as well as those commonly found. The gallery will be digitised in a way that buttons attached to a screen in each section will help visitors hear the sounds made by the animal and more about them in an audio-visual format. The highlight will be a life-size working model of a dinosaur made on the principle of robotics. Alshaz Fatmi, Assistant Director of State museum and In-charge of the Natural History Gallery, said, "Our motive is to provide a chance to everybody to feel connected to the environment. The infusion of modern technology and audio-visual medium will not just make the museum interactive, but also help visitors learn about exhibits." State Museum Director, Anand Kumar Singh, said, "There are several natural history museums in the country. The one in Lucknow will be the first in Uttar Pradesh. Overall, there are four museums in the state: Personalia museum, archaeology museum, folk art museum and state museum. A tribal museum is also under construction." /IANS