In which unique dinosaurs lived many millions of years ago, which were not found anywhere else in the world, Psittacosaurus Siberian.
The scientific world has known about Shestakovo for more than sixty years, blog readers have known about it for three years, and the rest of the public learned about this unique place last year, when the regional museum of local lore began excavations here.
Now anyone can see how the excavations are carried out live, and not in photographs, almost every weekend the museum makes field trips to the sites of paleontological and archaeological Shestakov excavations.
2. The Chebulinsky district, of course, thanks to the Shestakov finds, is the most popular excursion route, starting at the local history museum of the village of Verkh-Chebula, after which all tourists get to the chapel of Filaret Sreznevsky. The chapel stands right on the road in a small, specially created cedar grove. Clean air, nature, beautiful alleys and benches, a very pleasant place 
3. A little further for tourists, they created an "Ecological path" passing through the forest. While walking along the trail, you can learn the names of trees and plants that grow in the area. A good example of how an absolutely ordinary forest became part of a tourist route 
4.
5. Now Shestakovo is known to all dinosaurs and paleontological excavations. But in addition to paleontologists, archaeologists also work here. Moreover, they have also been working here for a long time, archaeologists have been coming here to excavate cities and burial grounds of the Tashtyk culture since the 60s of the last century.
Now archaeologists are working at the Shestakovo III Burial Mound.
Due to its natural uniqueness and archaeological sites, almost the entire area around the village of Shestakovo is a specially protected area 
6. Now this burial ground is a kind of stone and wooden burnt crypt.
In the Tashtyk culture, it was customary to burn the dead. After burning on a ritual fire, the calcined bones of the deceased were sewn into bags. In place of the face, a portrait funeral mask was put, molded from a cast taken from the face of the deceased. Up to several dozen human remains were placed in one crypt at once. 
7. Another crypt, work on which is just beginning 
8. Paleontologists are working literally a couple of hundred meters from archaeologists.
The first dinosaurs in Shestakovo were found in 1953. After that, many paleontologists worked here, and Tomsk scientists were engaged in excavations for a long time. One of the largest finds was made in the 90s, when 2 dinosaur skeletons were found here, lying on top of each other, scientists decided to give them the names Adam and Eve, but after a detailed study of the remains, it turned out that they were 2 males.
Last year, the license for paleontological excavations in this place was received by the Kemerovo Regional Museum of Local Lore, whose employees began excavations together with a group of scientists from the A.A. Borisyak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Over the past year, the remains of 12 dinosaurs have been found and, apparently, there will be many more finds here. 
9. The most famous Kuzbass dinosaurs are the Siberian Psittocaurs, they are unique in that the Shestakov Psittocaurs are the largest representatives of this genus, they reach a length of almost three meters, previously found only smaller individuals.
At least ten species of psittacosaurus have been identified from fossil remains found in different regions of China, Mongolia and Russia. All species were bipedal herbivores with a characteristic tall, powerful beak on the upper jaw. Translated from Latin, Psittacosaurus means parrot lizard.
In addition to the "giant" Psittokasaurus, young of this genus, and mammoths, and crocodiles, and other small reptiles, whose age reaches hundreds of millions of years, are constantly found here. 
10. The work here is not the most physically difficult, but you have to sit in the sun all day, and carefully, centimeter by centimeter, with the help of small knives, spatulas and brushes, make discoveries that the whole world will talk about later 
11. Senior researcher of the Paleontological Institute. A. A. Borisyak RAS Evgeny Mashchenko and found evidence that millions of years ago, even before the dinosaurs, this place was the bottom of the sea. The main part of the finds is transported to Kemerovo, where they are cleaned and put in order throughout the winter. So the work goes on all year round, and not just during the summer excavations. 
12. For a long time, there was no museum in Shestakovo, and a huge number of interesting finds were kept in the home collection of Mikhail Santiev, the caretaker of the Shestakov Complex of Early Cretaceous Vertebrates, collected by him and his wife. Now some of these finds have become exhibits of a small local museum. 
13. Shestakovskiy Yar, located on the banks of one of the most beautiful and cleanest rivers in the Kii region. It was here that dinosaurs were discovered for the first time 60 years ago, and this happened quite by accident.
Now, due to the danger of the collapse of the Yar, tourists can only look at it like this from the side 
14. Just a few years ago, it was possible to freely walk right up to the ravine itself, take a walk and even find small fragments of dinosaurs or algae prints on stones. 
15. Every year the water washes away the ravine more and more, it collapses and now it is not so easy to get to it. But it was thanks to the water that this "cemetery of dinosaurs" was discovered, the water constantly just washes the remains of reptiles right to the surface 
16. Tourist point of observation of the yar from the side of the yar 
17. Another observation deck is being built above the ravine itself, from which a view of the entire village, the foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau and the most beautiful Kuzbass nature opens 
18. One hundred million years ago, the only Siberian Psittocosaurs in the world ran through these hills and valleys, and now lambs are walking in their place :) 
A fossil representative of the genus of nodosaurs, which are called "four-legged tanks", has finally become available for public viewing at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, Canada.
The appearance of the found Nodosaurus in the view of scientists |
According to National Geographic, this is the best preserved fossil of its kind.
In one of the local mines, excavator operator Sean Funk accidentally discovered a large lump of dirt (1130 kg) in the ground with an unusual texture and pattern.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
The dinosaur was discovered on March 21, 2011 in Alberta, Canada. Then Sean Funk, the operator of one of the local mines, stumbled upon a large lump of dirt with an unusual texture and pattern with an escalator bucket. The weight of the find was 1,100 kg.
For the next six years, the fossil was studied by specialists from the Royal Tyrrell Paleontological Museum. What they managed to get looks more like a sculpture than a fossil.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
After a long and lengthy work with the dinosaur mummy, it was decided to put it on display as a museum exhibit.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Museum staff say that this armored dinosaur is better preserved than any other similar finds. The ideal condition could be the reason that the dinosaur ended up at the bottom of the ocean or sea.
“Rare, like winning the lottery. The more I look at it, the more it overwhelms me.” —Michael Greshko for National Geographic
The tip was lined with keratin, a material also found in human nails. | Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
The accumulation of pebble-like masses may be the remains of a nodosaur's last meal. | Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Scientists have not yet been able to get to the skeleton of the fossil, fearing to destroy the well-preserved skin and shell of the bone plates.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Computed tomography also did not help, since the stone still remains a low-transparent substance.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Nodosaurus lived in the middle of the Cretaceous period about 110-112 years ago.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
Representatives of this species reached up to 5 meters in length and weighed about 1,300 kg. Their body was covered with dense armor to protect them from other large animals, and two one and a half meter spikes grew on their shoulders.
Photo: nationalgeographic.com / Robert Clark
On the dinosaur's torso, chocolate-brown ribs sit alongside rufous osteoderms and dark gray scales. The tendons that once held the dinosaur's tail (above) ran along its spine and were striped dark brown.
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Evgeny Zolotukhin writes: In the Kuzbass there is a unique village of Shestakovo, in which many millions of years ago unique dinosaurs lived, which were not found anywhere else in the world - Siberian psittacosaurs.
Another name for the psittacosaurus is "parrot lizard". Looking at the picture of this ancient reptile modeled by scientists, based on the remains, you will understand that the name of the animal was not in vain. The modern classification classifies psittacosaurus as an ornithischian order. This animal was characterized by some signs of familiar birds to all of us: a rounded head and a powerful beak. Perhaps the Psittacosaurus was one of the transitional forms from reptiles to birds and the ancestor of parrots, who knows?!
The scientific world has known about Shestakovo for more than sixty years, and the rest of the public learned about this unique place last year, when the regional museum of local lore began regular excavations here. Now anyone can see how the excavations are carried out live, and not in photographs, almost every weekend the museum makes field trips to the sites of paleontological and archaeological Shestakov excavations.
2. The Chebulinsky district, of course, thanks to the Shestakov finds, is the most popular excursion route, starting at the local history museum of the village of Verkh-Chebula, after which all tourists get to the chapel of Filaret Sreznevsky. The chapel stands right on the road in a small, specially created cedar grove. Clean air, nature, beautiful alleys and benches, a very pleasant place
3. A little further for tourists, they created an "Ecological path" passing through the forest. While walking along the trail, you can learn the names of trees and plants that grow in the area. A good example of how an absolutely ordinary forest became part of a tourist route
5. Now Shestakovo is known to all dinosaurs and paleontological excavations. But in addition to paleontologists, archaeologists also work here. Moreover, they have also been working here for a long time, archaeologists have been coming here to excavate cities and burial grounds of the Tashtyk culture since the 60s of the last century.
Now archaeologists are working at the Shestakovo III Burial Mound.
Due to its natural uniqueness and archaeological sites, almost the entire area around the village of Shestakovo is a specially protected area
6. Now this burial ground is a kind of stone and wooden burnt crypt.
In the Tashtyk culture, it was customary to burn the dead. After burning on a ritual fire, the calcined bones of the deceased were sewn into bags. In place of the face, a portrait funeral mask was put, molded from a cast taken from the face of the deceased. Up to several dozen human remains were placed in one crypt at once.
7. Another crypt, work on which is just beginning
8. Paleontologists are working literally a couple of hundred meters from archaeologists.
The first dinosaurs in Shestakovo were found in 1953. After that, many paleontologists worked here, and Tomsk scientists were engaged in excavations for a long time. One of the largest finds was made in the 90s, when 2 dinosaur skeletons were found here, lying on top of each other, scientists decided to give them the names Adam and Eve, but after a detailed study of the remains, it turned out that they were 2 males.
Last year, the license for paleontological excavations in this place was received by the Kemerovo Regional Museum of Local Lore, whose employees began excavations together with a group of scientists from the A.A. Borisyak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Over the past year, the remains of 12 dinosaurs have been found and, apparently, there will be many more finds here.
9. The most famous Kuzbass dinosaurs are the Siberian Psittocaurs, they are unique in that the Shestakov Psittocaurs are the largest representatives of this genus, they reach a length of almost three meters, previously found only smaller individuals.
At least ten species of psittacosaurus have been identified from fossil remains found in different regions of China, Mongolia and Russia. All species were bipedal herbivores with a characteristic tall, powerful beak on the upper jaw. Translated from Latin, Psittacosaurus means parrot lizard.
In addition to the "giant" Psittokasaurus, young of this genus, and mammoths, and crocodiles, and other small reptiles, whose age reaches hundreds of millions of years, are constantly found here.
10. The work here is not the most physically difficult, but you have to sit in the sun all day, and carefully, centimeter by centimeter, with the help of small knives, spatulas and brushes, make discoveries that the whole world will talk about later
11. Senior researcher of the Paleontological Institute. A. A. Borisyak RAS Evgeny Mashchenko and found evidence that millions of years ago, even before the dinosaurs, this place was the bottom of the sea. The main part of the finds is transported to Kemerovo, where they are cleaned and put in order throughout the winter. So the work goes on all year round, and not just during the summer excavations.
12. For a long time, there was no museum in Shestakovo, and a huge number of interesting finds were kept in the home collection of Mikhail Santiev, the caretaker of the Shestakov Complex of Early Cretaceous Vertebrates, collected by him and his wife. Now some of these finds have become exhibits of a small local museum.
13. Shestakovskiy Yar, located on the banks of one of the most beautiful and cleanest rivers in the Kii region. It was here that dinosaurs were discovered for the first time 60 years ago, and this happened quite by accident.
Now, due to the danger of the collapse of the Yar, tourists can only look at it like this from the side
14. Just a few years ago, it was possible to freely walk right up to the ravine itself, take a walk and even find small fragments of dinosaurs or algae prints on stones.
15. Every year the water washes away the ravine more and more, it collapses and now it is not so easy to get to it. But it was thanks to the water that this "cemetery of dinosaurs" was discovered, the water constantly just washes the remains of reptiles right to the surface
16. Tourist point of observation of the yar from the side of the yar
17. Another observation deck is being built above the ravine itself, from which a view of the entire village, the foothills of the Kuznetsk Alatau and the most beautiful Kuzbass nature opens
18. A hundred million years ago, the only Siberian Psittocosaurs in the world ran through these hills and valleys, and now lambs are walking in their place
What other dinosaurs lived in Russia?
For a century, Russian dinosaurs have been playing hide-and-seek with scientists. Who won this exciting game?
“Russian dinosaurs, like the snakes of Ireland, are notable only for the fact that they do not exist,” said American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. 120 years ago, he came to the Russian Empire and was surprised to learn that not a single dinosaur bone was found in our country.
That was incredible. Was there really no Mesozoic giants in the largest country in the world?
Russian scientists were not lucky with dinosaurs. These animals reigned on the planet in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when half of the current territory of Russia was covered by shallow seas. Herds of lizards roamed inland. But their bones were not preserved - they ended up in the area of sediment drift, from where sand and clay were dragged into the seas, to the burial places. Bones arrived there ground to dust.
Occasionally, on land, conditions were suitable for preserving the remains: the dinosaur drowned in a swamp or lake, or suffocated in layers of volcanic ash. But such burials were thoroughly destroyed over the past millions of years - glaciers passed through Russia, cutting off bedrock, and then melted glacial waters began to erode and break petrified bones.
Compared to the dinosaur cemeteries of Asia and America, where thousands of bones were dug up, it looked frankly meager: in Russia, only one single bone turned out to be dinosaur.
But this is not even the main reason for the failures that scientists had to endure. Everything that miraculously survived today is covered with forests, fields and is not available for study. Unlike the United States, Canada and China, Russia is not lucky: we do not have badlands - huge desert areas cut by gorges and canyons. All the preserved bones of Russian dinosaurs lie deep underground, it is very difficult to get them. Occasionally, fossil remains come across in quarries, mines, along the banks of rivers and streams. Great luck if they are noticed in time and handed over to scientists. But luck was not enough for a long time.
At the end of the 19th century, fragments of bones that could pass for dinosaurs were occasionally brought to Russian museums. Strange ribs were found in the gravel with which the Kursk road was paved. A piece of bone was delivered from Volyn-Podolia. An unusual vertebra was dug up in the Southern Urals. Accidentally mined was described as the remains of dinosaurs, but later it turned out that these were the bones of crocodiles, marine reptiles, and even amphibians.
However, even such finds were few - they would all fit in a small basket. Compared to the dinosaur cemeteries of Asia and America, where thousands of bones were dug up, it looked frankly meager: in Russia, only one single bone turned out to be dinosaur.
A small fragment of the lizard's foot was dug up in the Chita region near a coal mine. Paleontologist Anatoly Ryabinin described it in 1915 under the name Allosaurus sibiricus, although it was impossible to determine which dinosaur it belonged to from one bone. It is clear that predatory - and that's all.
Soon more valuable remains were found. True, two curiosities happened to them at once.
Once, an Amur Cossack lieutenant colonel noticed that fishermen were knitting strange sinkers on their nets - long stones with a hole in the middle. The fishermen said that they collect them on the banks of the Amur, where a high cliff is eroded. According to them, it turned out that the entire beach was covered with stone knuckles.
This was reported to the Academy of Sciences. An expedition was organized, which, right before the revolution, delivered more than a ton of fossilized remains to St. Petersburg. A large skeleton was assembled from them, describing it as a new species of duck-billed dinosaur. The lizard was given the name "Amur Manchurosaurus" (Mandschurosaurus amurensis).
True, evil tongues called him a gypsosaurus, because he lacked many bones - they were molded from gypsum. The skull - the most important part of the skeleton - was also plaster, in which only a piece of the brain box was real. Later it became clear that the original bones belong to different species and genera of lizards. Now almost none of the paleontologists recognizes the Manchurosaurs. The irony also lies in the fact that the bones were collected on the right, Chinese bank of the Amur. So the "hypsosaurus" should not be considered Russian, but rather Chinese.
Curiosity came out with the second skeleton. Japanese paleontologists dug up the lizard in the coal mines of Sakhalin and named the Sakhalin nipponosaurus (Nipponosaurus sachalinensis). It was in the 1930s, when, after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan owned the island. Fifteen years later, Sakhalin again became Russian, but the dinosaur remained "Japanese". And more remains of dinosaurs were not found here.
The search for dinosaurs in Russia and the Soviet Union remained unsuccessful for a long time. It got ridiculous. In the late 1920s, a paleontological expedition headed to the southern outskirts of the Soviet Union, to the Kazakh steppes. “All day long the horse walked over countless dinosaur bones,” recalled its participant, paleontologist and science fiction writer Ivan Yefremov. The bones covered vast areas of tens of kilometers. But not a single skeleton or skull was found - only fragments of bones. “They didn’t know how to study them then, no one collected them,” says paleontologist Alexander Averyanov. Only half a century later, experts learned to identify extinct animals from fragmentary remains. But then the huge cemetery of dinosaurs in Kazakhstan had already been lost.
Then, for several years, Soviet paleontologists worked in the Kara-Tau mountains of Kazakhstan, where layers of gray shales occur. These mountains contain a great variety of fish, plant and insect prints from the Jurassic period. Unique skeletons of ancient salamanders, turtles, full prints of pterosaurs, and a bird feather were found here.
The remains of almost all the inhabitants of the Jurassic lake and those who inhabited its shores were found. And again - no dinosaurs, although the Jurassic period was the time of their heyday ...
In the first half of the last century, numerous burials of Permian animal lizards, Devonian fish, and Triassic amphibians were discovered on the territory of Russia. The paleontological labs had everything from fossil insects to mammoth carcasses. Everything except the notorious marvelous lizards - this is how Ivan Efremov called dinosaurs in the Russian manner.
Only in 1953, paleontologists were really lucky. On the high bank of the Kemerovo River Kiya near the village of Shestakovo, geologists came across a skull and an incomplete skeleton of a small dog-sized psittacosaurus, which was called Siberian (Psittacosaurus sibiricus). The skeleton was delivered to Moscow.
A paleontological expedition was immediately dispatched to Kuzbass, but luck turned away from the scientists again. They did not find any remains - the water was high that summer, the layer with bones was flooded.
Three years later, at the request of Efremov, an expedition of Kemerovo schoolchildren went to Shestakovo, headed by Gennady Prashkevich, a well-known writer, poet, and translator in the future. The guys then collected a whole box of bones, but, as it turned out in Moscow, they all belonged to mammoths and bison. Only half a century later, several more dinosaur bones were found in Shestakovo, including huge, like a bucket, sauropod vertebrae.
Everything was no less complicated with the locations of dinosaurs in the Far East. In the 1950s, an expedition from the Paleontological Institute tried to find dinosaurs in Blagoveshchensk. Excavations yielded nothing but a handful of scattered bones. It was decided that the bones were redeposited here: once whole skeletons were broken by water, after which the fragments were carried away to another place. A cross was put on the site. As it turned out later - in vain.
The lizards found in the Far East turned out to be very interesting - they are one of the last dinosaurs that lived on the planet.
In the late 1990s, a road was being laid in the hills near Kundur, and in one of the construction trenches, the son of geologist Yuri Bolotsky saw small vertebrae lying like a chain, one next to the other. It turned out to be the tail of a hadrosaur. Gradually digging up the remains, geologists uncovered a complete skeleton. The lizard was named Arharin Olorotitan (Olorotitan arharensis). The first discovery was followed by others. Now excavations are carried out annually in the Far East, mainly in Blagoveshchensk. The local lizards turned out to be very interesting - they are one of the last dinosaurs that lived on the planet. They lived literally at the end of the great extinction.
The study of Russian dinosaurs in general has advanced greatly in the last twenty years. Found a dozen large locations, managed to find valuable remains in the previously known places of finds.
The main burial places of Russian dinosaurs are located beyond the Urals - in Kundur, Blagoveshchensk, Shestakov.
A unique location was discovered on the banks of the Kakanaut River in the Koryak Highlands - this is the northernmost point of discovery of dinosaurs on the planet. Bones of seven families and egg shells of at least two dinosaur species have been found here. Remains of Cretaceous lizards have also been found in Buryatia (localities of Murtoy and Krasny Yar) and the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Bolshoy Kemchug). Dinosaurs of the Jurassic period have been found in Yakutia (Teete) and in the Tyva Republic (Kalbak-Kyry).
A small burial of Jurassic reptiles was discovered near the city of Sharypovo in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Local historian Sergei Krasnolutsky came up with the idea: since dinosaurs were found in the neighboring Kemerovo region, they can also be found here, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
In search of bones, he went to a coal quarry. For a long time nothing came across, but finally the local historian saw broken turtle shells. There were so many of them that this layer was later called turtle soup. And nearby were bone plaques and teeth of crocodiles, long curved claws of dinosaurs that lived in the middle of the Jurassic period.
This time is practically a "blank spot" in the evolution of terrestrial life. Very few traces of him have survived. It is not surprising that the excavations in Sharypovo, which have been going on for several years, have led to the discovery of new animals. Among them are the still undescribed stegosaurus and the carnivorous dinosaur kilesk (Kileskus aristotocus) - the distant ancestor of the famous tyrannosaurs.
In the western part of Russia there are no burials with intact skeletons and skulls of dinosaurs. Here, primarily in the Volga region and the Belgorod region, mostly scattered remains come across - individual vertebrae, teeth or fragments of bones.
An interesting find was made a hundred kilometers from Moscow, near the Peski railway station, in a quarry where white limestones are mined. Jurassic sinkholes are found in these quarries. In the early 1990s, bulldozers unearthed a whole chain of ancient caves. 175 million years ago, an underground river flowed in them, originating in the lake. The river carried the remains of animals, tree branches, and plant spores underground.
For several years, paleontologists have managed to collect numerous turtle shells, bones of amphibians, crocodiles and ancient mammals, fish skeletons, freshwater shark spikes and the remains of predatory coelurosaurs (Coelurosauria). These dinosaurs probably reached about three meters in length, although the bones found were small: teeth the size of a fingernail and a claw smaller than a matchstick.
Gradually, the picture of the life of Russian marvelous lizards becomes more and more complete. Surely new graves will be discovered. Yes, and those that have long been known, constantly bring surprises in the form of bones of previously unknown dinosaurs.
Othniel Charles Marsh, who assured that there were no Russian dinosaurs, ended his statement with the words that sooner or later the remains of these animals would be found in Russia. The American paleontologist was right, although the wait was long.
And now let's remember the extinct animals that lived on the territory of Russia:
1. Olorotitan Arkharinsky (Amur Region).
This dinosaur was one of the largest representatives of its family, reaching a length of 12 meters. It is characterized by features unique to hadrosaurids, the most obvious of which is the uniquely shaped crest that crowns the skull. Like other hadrosaurs, orolotitan could walk on both two and four legs. The structure of the skull made it possible to grind hard plant foods, and numerous teeth were replaced throughout life. A wide, hollow crest, formed from the expanded bones of the skull, was pierced by the nasal passages and was probably used to produce trumpet sounds. It is also noteworthy that these are one of the last dinosaurs that lived on the planet. They lived literally at the end of the great extinction.
2. Estemmenosuch (Perm region).
These primitive herbivorous therapsids existed even before the dinosaurs - about 267 million years ago. In those days, the earth was a single supercontinent, Pangea. But it is noteworthy that so far the remains of Estemmenosuchus have been found only in the Perm Territory. They were quite large animals, the size of a modern minibus. They led a semi-aquatic lifestyle (like hippos). The basis of their diet could be dead trunks of calamites. Nevertheless, the structure of the dental system does not exclude omnivorousness (for example, feeding on carrion).
3. Psittacosaurus (Kemerovo region).
Representative of the infraorder of horned dinosaurs that lived in the early Cretaceous period approximately 130-100 million years ago. All species of psittacosaurus (and there are at least 10 of them, according to fossil remains) were bipedal herbivores the size of a gazelle, with a characteristic high, powerful beak on the upper jaw. At least one species of psitaccosaur had long, feather-like structures on its tail and hindquarters, probably for display purposes.
4. Elasmotherium (Astrakhan region).
Elasmotherium is a genus of rhinos that lived in Eurasia from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene. They differed in large sizes (length up to 6 meters, height up to 2.5 meters, weight up to 5 tons). Their main feature is a large dome-shaped outgrowth on the forehead. Some scientists suggest that it had a long (more than 1.5 m) and thick horn. At the same time, the bones of the dome are very thin, and the dome itself has a spongy structure. In general, Elasmotherians lived not only in Russia. They were distributed from Western Europe to Eastern Siberia. Closely related, but more primitive genera are known from the Miocene-Pliocene of China, Iran and Spain.
5. Titanophoneus (Urals).
One of the largest predators of the Permian period. The length of his skull is about 60 cm, and the entire body is up to 6 meters. Titanophoneus were distinguished by powerful incisors and fangs, 8-9 pairs of small postcanine teeth. The legs are powerful, not very long, with wide hands and feet (perhaps there was a swimming membrane). The tail is long. In general, the skeleton is quite light. Initially, the Titanophone was considered an aquatic predator, like a crocodile, but it is likely that adults hunted large vertebrates on land as well.
6. Suminia (Kirov region).
A prehistoric synapsid belonging to the clade Anomodontia that lived about 260 million years ago in the late Permian period. The suminia's teeth were fairly large in relation to its body size, with one cusp per tooth and many knife-like serrations. Over the course of a lifetime, teeth fall out and grow back. The eye socket was quite large. The paws were prehensile, which led the researchers to suggest that suminia was the earliest arboreal vertebrate.
7. Titanosaurus (Ulyanovsk region).
A group of lizard dinosaurs of the infraorder sauropods that lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods about 171-65.5 million years ago on all continents of the planet except Antarctica. They were herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails, and moved on four legs. They reached a length of up to 35-40 meters and weighed between 88 and 110 tons.
8. Ivantosaurus (Perm region).
A huge formidable predator of the middle of the Permian period. An early version of the saber-toothed tiger. The length of the skull of this giant could reach 75 cm, and the fangs - 15 cm. Ivantosaurus lived 40 million years before the advent of dinosaurs and belonged to another, no less diverse group of reptiles - animal lizards, from which modern mammals originated.
9. Cave lion (Yakutia).
An extinct subspecies of lions that inhabited Europe and Siberia during the Pleistocene era. He was one of the largest representatives of the cat family of all time. Previously, its status was not entirely clear, but today it is considered a clearly distinguishable subspecies of modern lions. Cave lions reached a length of up to 2.4 m, excluding the tail, and were half a meter larger than modern lions. In size, they corresponded to a liger, a hybrid of a lion and a tigress.
According to some studies, cave lions mainly hunted deer and sometimes cave bear cubs, that is, their diet was not very diverse, unlike their modern relatives, who attack almost everything that moves. According to these researchers, such a stingy diet could be the reason for the extinction of lions, since climate warming began 19 thousand years ago, and deer with cave bears began to gradually disappear. As a result, the lions lost their main source of food and also began to die out.
10. Mammoth (Siberia).
Mammoths reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 10-12 tons. Thus, mammoths were twice as heavy as the largest modern land mammals - African elephants. Mammoths appeared in the Pliocene and lived 2 million - 9000 years ago in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Numerous bones of mammoths have been found in the sites of an ancient man of the Stone Age; drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man were also found. In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of finding the corpses of mammoths, preserved due to their stay in the thickness of permafrost.
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Amur period park
In Blagoveshchensk, you can touch a dinosaur egg, see a lobe-finned fish, take part in paleontological excavations and take a selfie against the backdrop of the bones of a “giant swan” / Amur Region. Blagoveshchensk
The Paleontological Museum in Blagoveshchensk occupies the first floor of an ordinary residential building. There is such a house in any Russian city: sand-lime brickwork, glazed balconies, outdoor air conditioners under the windows.
Amur Paleontological Museum. Reconstruction of the appearance of an amurosaurus. Drawing by Yu. Bolotsky
Cars drive along the street, children go to school, women carry bags of groceries, and a banner flaunts above the entrance with the inscription: "The Last Dinosaurs of Asia." Huge animals with arched backs and pointed snouts look at passers-by in surprise. Mysterious antediluvian lizards come to the ocean from thickets of tree ferns. The word "dinosaur" appeared in the middle of the 19th century, when British paleontologists found a fragment of the lower jaw with teeth similar to those of an iguana, only much larger. By combining two Greek words - deinos and sauros - scientists have come up with a term that translates as "terrible lizard." The British believed that reptiles were descended from dinosaurs, but Yale University professor Othoniel Charles Marsh decided that dinosaurs were the ancestors of birds, not reptiles. In search of "toothy birds" Marsh even visited Russia, but, finding nothing, disappointedly stated: "The dinosaurs of Russia, like the snakes of Ireland, are remarkable only because they are not there." Indeed, for some reason there are no snakes in Ireland and they have never been found on the island. But the American scientist miscalculated with Russian dinosaurs.
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Dinosaur Cemetery
In 1902, colonel of the tsarist army Mikhail Manakin noticed that Russian fishermen on the Amur were tying some bones to their nets as weights. In response to the question of where these bones came from, the fishermen brought the officer to the Manchurian bank of the river and showed the remains of an animal unknown to science. They wrote in Amurskaya Gazeta then: “Colonel Manakin suggests that these are mammoth bones, but judging by the fact that the bones are completely petrified, one can think that they belong to an era older than that in which the mammoth lived. The skeleton lies on its left side, with its front limbs turned towards the river. Occupying a length of up to 5 fathoms. After conducting excavations at this place, scientists brought to St. Petersburg 62 pounds of bones of a fossil creature, which was given the name Manchurosaurus. In 1925, the beast was assembled from head to toe and a frame was built to support the bones in a certain position. The Manchurosaurus was placed in one of the halls of the Geological Museum named after F.N. Chernyshev, where he can still be seen today.
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In 1948, a Blagoveshchensk schoolboy, playing in the vicinity of a quarry on the southeastern outskirts of the city, picked up a strange bone that clearly belonged to a large animal. The boy took the fossil to the local history museum. It turned out that in the area of Nagornaya Street lies a whole bone layer - a cemetery of dinosaurs with an area of more than 200 square meters. meters. During the excavations, paleontologists discovered here previously unknown species of pangolins that lived in the era of the great extinction. The exhibits of the Paleontological Museum in Blagoveshchensk mainly consist of finds mined in the city at the "dinosaur" excavation.
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From microbe to turtle
“Once a believing woman with a child came to our museum,” says Honored Cultural Worker Vera Chigarskikh. — As always, I started the tour with a story about the process of evolution on our planet. She said that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago. And suddenly I feel that my mother is looking at me with some kind of distrustful and condemning look. After all, the Bible says that the world was created 6 thousand years ago, and the Earth was formed in 6 days. But you can't argue with the facts. On our chronological table, you can see the mark "Archaeozoic era" - this is the period when bacteria appeared. One of the most interesting exhibits belongs to the Paleozoic - the imprint of an arthropod insect on a trilobite. Here is a model of a lobe-finned fish that appeared in the Devonian era. When in 1938 a fossil was found near the island of Madagascar, scientists were shocked. It was the same fish from which amphibians, frogs, newts originated. Over time, the water on the planet decreased, and the animals began to go on land. To protect the eggs, nature invented the shell. Crocodiles appeared, from them came Dargonops - animal-toothed lizards.
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It is hard to believe, but once upon a time, heat-loving turtles lived on the territory of the Amur Region. Here is a piece of tortoise shell, which was found in the Amur waters during the time of the dinosaurs. The last such turtle was caught in 1995. We have the imprint of Ginkgo, the progenitor of all conifers. After conifers, angiosperms appear on Earth, then flowering plants. Lizards adapt to a new diet, but about 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, they all disappear. Since then, there have been no aquatic, flying, or upright dinosaurs.”
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Amurosaurus
Vera Ivanovna presses the button on the remote control, and the first frames of the cartoon appear on the screen, telling about the appearance of a cemetery of dinosaurs in Blagoveshchensk. A carefree cub jumps over bumps, looking for a delicacy among green thickets. The kid leaves the frame, and his older relatives continue to graze in the clearing. Suddenly the wind blows, streams of water pour from the sky, a flood begins. The remaining dinosaurs are washed away by the elements. Mudflow carries huge carcasses, breaking legs and tearing off tails. The high water brings dinosaurs to the place where Blagoveshchensk now stands. The greasy clay cements the remains, keeping them underground for many millions of years.
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At the Blagoveshchensk site, archaeologists are digging the "Late Cretaceous" - the boundary of the cut of the earth's crust, along which the last dinosaurs walked. A huge collection of bones of herbivorous pangolins that lived millions of years ago on the territory of the current Amur Region has been collected.
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One of the species was named Amurosaurus. The giant reached a height of 12 meters and weighed up to 5 tons. He knew how to walk on his hind legs, grabbing branches with his forelimbs and cutting off foliage. An elastic membrane was stretched between the fingers on the paws of the beast, and the skin, like armor, was covered with an ornament of horny scales. Amurosaurus belongs to the family of hadrosaurs - "duck-billed dinosaurs". A characteristic sign of animals of this species is a bone crest on the head. There is a version that such a "helmet" was needed in order to rake the muddy bottom of the reservoir in search of food. When the head of the amurosaurus was under water, it retracted its eyes and covered them with its third eyelid, and crushed the food with its grater-like teeth.
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Giant swan and giant duck
In 2004, after four years of excavations in the southeast of the Amur Region near the Kundur railway station, a paleontological expedition led by scientist Yuri Bolotsky unearthed another skeleton of a previously unknown hadrosaur. It was the largest dinosaur found in Russia. Judging by the flat tail, resembling a fish fin, and the wide duck beak, the beast swam well. The new species of lizards was named Olorotitan, which means "giant swan". It turned out that the closest relatives of the four-legged lived not in Mongolia or China, but on the American continent - in the states of Montana and South Dakota. The fact is that in the Mesozoic era Europe and America were connected by a land isthmus. Many species of animals, including dinosaurs, migrated along this "bridge" between the Old and New Worlds. The American hadrosaur is called anatotitan - "giant duck". Anatotitan differs from Olorotitan, its Kundurian counterpart, in a shorter neck: in the first it has 16 vertebrae, in the second - 8. 170. On this basis, we can conclude: 65 million years ago, the "Russian" dinosaur was not only more elegant, but also much smarter than the "American".
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The collection of the Paleontological Museum has a tooth of another giant lizard - a tyrannosaurus. Apparently, this beast attacked the Olorotitan and bit its tail. Olorotitan managed to escape, but a piece of tooth with a pointed “nail file” survived. Based on the structure of the notches, paleontologists determined that the tooth belonged not to a herbivore, but to a carnivorous dinosaur.
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Little paleontologists
The Paleontological Laboratory of the Institute of Geology and Nature Management of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is working with bone fragments and small material found during excavations. Water is removed from the fossils, an adhesive solution is pumped in instead, then the bones are poured with plaster. Hardened gypsum protects fragile rarities from damage and deformation. The whole room of the laboratory is lined with boxes of plastered bones, and the skeleton of an Olorotitan stands against the wall. The “giant swan” simply did not fit in the Paleontological Museum - the height of the ceilings is not intended to demonstrate such a large exhibit. But in the museum you can see other unique finds - a three-meter limb of a young amurosaurus, dentary bones of duck-billed herbivorous dinosaurs, tail, neck and torso vertebrae of a flat-headed kerberosaurus.
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The main part of the museum visitors are schoolchildren, and a special program has been developed for them. With those who come for the first time, Vera Ivanovna conducts a "scientific study" - she gives them a fossil to hold in their hands, teaches them to distinguish the ischium from the tail vertebra. On the second visit, the children play 'dig', using shovels to find skeletal fragments hidden in the sand. For the third time, boys and girls cut out bones, vertebrae and skulls of ancient lizards from paper. Each of the children builds their own dinosaur, feeling like a real paleontologist.
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