“You walk, and bones of dinosaurs stick out of the ground”: an interview with the historian of paleontology Anton Nelikhov
Miscellaneous / / April 05, 2023
Why were fossilized excrement from the Vladimir region useful for scientists and who sells mammoths on ad sites.
Recently, the historian of paleontology Anton Nelikhov published a book “Dinosaurs of Russia». We talked with him and found out if it would be possible to resurrect the ancient lizards, where to find their remains, and how Ilya Muromets is connected with all this.
Anton Nelikhov
About paleontology
How did your passion for paleontology start?
- There is a catchy phrase of one entomologist: “All children are fond of bugs and frogs. Normal people get over it." It's the same with paleontology.
As a child, my parents brought me to the Moscow amusement park. There was a wall with painted dinosaurs. They made a lasting impression on me! I raved about them.
In Soviet times, there were no books, no magazines about dinosaurs - nothing.
I had to buy stamps with dinosaurs. They cost crazy money.
I became interested in this topic again at the age of 27, when I bought a book about dinosaurs for my eldest child. Contacted the paleontology community. I began to collect shells and stories about people who also collect them.
What does the job of a paleontologist look like?
— The work of paleontologists consists of two parts. In the warm season - the field season. People are happy to go to the field with shovels, picks and other tools. Dig up bones and shells. Then laboratory work begins - the finds are cleaned and examined.
How did the science of paleontology originate?
The French naturalist Georges Cuvier is considered the father of paleontology. Until the 19th century, there was no idea in Europe about dinosaurs and other animals that existed in ancient times. People lived in accordance with the Christian picture of the world. And the Bible does not say that someone can disappear. The Lord created everyone once and, presumably, perfect. How can a perfect creation of God disappear? That's right, no way.
The very idea of extinction was contrary to Christian attitudes.
Therefore, everything that people found was interpreted in accordance with the religious model. Shells on top of the mountain - traces of the flood. Large bones are the skeletons of giants.
For example, not far from Murom there is a village in which Ilya Muromets was allegedly born. There they found a location with the bones of the mammoth fauna. The locals began to tell that this is nothing but the remains of monsters that Ilyusha defeated.
About excavations
Are you involved in excavations?
- Yes. When you are familiar with a large number of paleontologists, it is perceived as tourism. I was in the Volga region, Moscow region, Dagestan, Komi Republic, Vologda region, Siberia.
When I wrote "Dinosaurs of Russia”, I realized that I need to personally visit the locations of their remains.
How are excavations organized?
- First, paleontologists contact geologists and local historians. Choose a place.
Further, depending on the goals of the exploration expedition, specialists need to go around the territory and find points where you can find something. Usually it is a quarry, a ravine, a hill.
The whole detachment disperses along the wall and looks for bones. If they do not find anything, then the next day they go to the next point.
There are stationary excavations - when paleontologists come to a certain place in order to extract the maximum amount of material. In this case, everyone does not use shovels, but knives and brushes.
What is the most valuable find you have discovered?
- Once, with comrades from the paleontological institute, we went to the Samara region and poked around in a small roadside quarry for a whole week.
During our stay, we had practically no finds. The bones are small and rarely found. Not interested.
There is such a thing - "the curse of the last day." This means that you usually find the most valuable when there is no time to dig.
And now - drizzling rain, in an hour we have to leave. I got bored, I hit a pickaxe in a random place and found the jaw of a captorinid, an animal that looks like a large lizard and lived long before the dinosaurs. She had several rows of teeth with which she gnawed at mollusks.
It was a beautiful jaw! The size of a large male index finger.
- Also, as far as I know, in the Moscow region you found an ancient starfish - the tenth in the world in 200 years of searching. Tell about this case.
- Yes. It's me skipped work. Went to the quarry on a weekday. My attention was attracted by a geometrically correct stone. As it turned out, inside it was a starfish. Her photo was published in National Geographic. A star has become a star.
- Can it be that a person accidentally discovers the bones of a dinosaur in his summer cottage?
Dinosaur bone is a very fragile thing. Its density is like a shortbread cookie. If a person accidentally finds it, then when they try to extract it, they will most likely destroy it.
There was a sad story in Tatarstan a hundred years ago. Two geology students walked through the local ravines and in one of them they found a whole skeleton of a beast lizard. They decided to take a better picture of him. They took the skull in their hands, and it crumbled.
Basically, people find something of little value - shells or mammoth fauna.
In the Middle Ages, the remains of mammoths were called the bones of giants, now they are sold at Avito.
For example, I somehow came across such an ad: in the photo - a mammoth tooth, the caption: “Bone of an unknown dinosaur. 40,000 rubles.”
I wrote to the man that this find is of no value - it can only be taken to the local history museum. They didn't answer me.
Occasionally, some people manage to find something interesting. For example, 10 years ago people decided to move the house. They dropped one of the sand slabs, and under it was half the jaw of a beast lizard. They donated it to the Paleontological Institute.
A sadder story happened in Stavropol. There, local inhabitants found a whole skeleton of an ancient whale. Posted on Avito. And then both this announcement and its creators disappeared somewhere.
About the dinosaurs of Russia
- In what regions of Russia are the largest locations of dinosaur remains?
“We have two giant locations. One of them, perhaps the largest in the world, is in Blagoveshchensk. There they found large lizards of the end of the Cretaceous period - hadrosaurs, tyrannosaurs.
Perhaps some catastrophic event occurred there - for example, a flood or a mudflow - and entire herds of dinosaurs died. There are practically no whole skeletons there. But everything is covered in rubble. You walk, and bones of dinosaurs stick out of the ground.
The second location is in the Kemerovo region, near the village of Shestakovo. Here are the remains of dinosaurs from the middle of the Cretaceous period. For 20 years, excavations have been carried out here annually.
— What important discoveries for the world community have been made in Russia?
— Paleontology rarely makes outstanding discoveries. Working in this area is like filling in a puzzle: they found a new dinosaur, it looked a certain way, its range was such and such. These are small details that are of interest mainly to a narrow circle of specialists.
But there were some bright discoveries. For example, Pavel Beznosov, a geologist and paleontologist from the Komi Republic, discovered one of our oldest terrestrial ancestors - "fish with legs." She already had paws, she tried come out on land. This discovery was reported in the top journal Nature, and Beznosov woke up famous.
Also on a global scale, the study of mammoths is important. Since Russia has a large permafrost zone, there are many of them found there. This allows us to draw new conclusions about the ecosystem.
About the appearance of dinosaurs
- How do scientists manage to restore the appearance of dinosaurs if there are very few remains?
- We don't have many of them. And in North America, they find whole skeletons. Some of the bones remain remarkably well preserved. On them, in the imagination, muscles, skin, and so on are built up.
Could it be that dinosaur skin was actually covered in fur and feathers?
- It is believed that most of the dinosaurs were covered with feather-like structures. But not with flight feathers, like those of birds (there is no need for a tyrannosaurus to fly), but small and inconspicuous.
Feathers and wool are indeed found. The most exotic finds of skin are in coprolites, petrified poop. In some places, quite a lot of them have been preserved. For example, in the city of Vyazniki in the Vladimir region, there is a whole shaft of coprolites, but there are practically no bones.
Scientists examined them up and down and found wool in them. There are two options for where she could come from there: either someone ate someone, or someone licked themselves like a cat.
So, it turns out that the oldest wool is in poop in the Vladimir region.
On the future of paleontology
What is the future of this science?
— Let me start by saying that paleontology is a fundamental science. It is needed so that people have an adequate picture of the world - an understanding of how our planet.
I do not think that something fundamentally new and important will be discovered in paleontology. Scientists are likely to refine the details.
Perhaps paleontology will somehow help medicine. After all, man is a derivative of ancient beings. Understanding how they evolved will allow us to learn something new about our body.
Why did the dinosaurs become extinct and will it be possible to resurrect them?
- The Western concept is considered basic: an asteroid fell to Earth. She has many questions. Some scientists are trying to look for internal causes. For example, there is a version that flowering plants appeared that dinosaurs could not really eat. Or that there are a lot of mammals and they began to massively eat eggs.
Be that as it may, dinosaurs cannot be resurrected. Perhaps, for the amusement of the public, they are selected from an ostrich or a chicken. And we will get giant toothy birds that will look like tyrannosaurs, but will not be tyrannosaurs.
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