#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Dmitry Boldyrev, a specialist at Taimyr Nature Reserves directorate discovered unique fossils of ancient mollusks near Norilsk. Among the finds are orthoceratids that existed in the Paleozoic era, which ended about 250 million years ago. These sea molluscs are a bit like modern octopuses: they had large eyes and many tentacles.
“Those fossils that look like corrugated hoses belong to the orthoceratids. The size of these creatures is about two meters, and the imprint is just their siphon, a device for jet movement in water”, Dmitry Boldyrev shared with his readers on his Instagram page.
As the Norilsk museum specialists said, such fossils once again prove that Taimyr once had seas.
“It is customary to divide the geological development of Taimyr into three parts: marine, freshwater-bogie and volcanic. It was during the marine period, when thousands of years ago the modern territories of Taimyr were flooded by seas, that mollusks, the fossils of which are found to this day, lived here. With the development of various processes, the water disappeared and left behind a low-lying swampy plain. At that time the climate was warm, humid, and subtropical forests grew on the territory of modern Taimyr, which later, in the third stage, when volcanic activity began, gave rise to the appearance of coal”, explained Dmitry Shebalkov, head of the museum’s holdings department.
According to him, unique finds showing the flora and fauna of the ancient period are not uncommon for Norilsk and Taimyr in general.
“Our nature is inaccessible, therefore, all the fossils are in good condition. Of course, if there was a global civilization here, for example, large cities, then there would be no traces of ancient mollusks”, Dmitry Shebalkov said.
Recall that in 2015, 150 kilometers north-west of Norilsk, at the mouth of the Ikon river, a fragment of a giant ammonite shell, which lived on the territory more than 60 million years ago, was found. Today it, like other paleontological finds, can be seen in the Norilsk museum and in the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore.
In addition, in 2012, on Taimyr, a schoolboy found the carcass of a mammoth that died about 30 thousand years ago. Later it turned out that the mammoth died at a young age, he was given the name Zhenya – in honor of the boy who found him. The taxidermists made a stuffed animal from the found remains, which is kept in the Taimyr Museum of Local Lore.
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Text: Ekaterina Elkanova, Photo: Dmitry Boldyrev and Olga Polyanskaya
