Jurassic Park in the suburbs: what ancient finds have survived

Geological chronicle: how the sea became land

More than 300 million years ago, long before the age of dinosaurs, a warm tropical sea was located on the territory of the modern Moscow region. In the endless shallow waters, where now the highways and cities are noisy, exotic corals, sea lilies, numerous mollusks and even large sharks lived. The remnants of these organisms formed powerful deposits of limestone – the very “white stone” from which the white stone Moscow was built millions of years later. The walls of ancient temples still contain particles of that relict sea.

About 200 million years ago, the sea finally retreated. But before, in the Jurassic period, when the Middle Russian Sea was just advancing, eroding the underlying Paleozoic deposits, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, ammonites and belemnites lived in these waters. At the beginning of the Cretaceous period, the territory was again covered by the sea. It is this multilayered geological record that makes the Moscow region a unique paleontological region.

Professor Sergey Naugolnykh of the Russian Academy of Sciences emphasizes: “Moscow is the only capital in the world surrounded by dozens of geological and paleontological monuments, covering the interval from the Carboniferous to Quaternary period.”.

Fossils and ancient creatures: what to find in the Domodedovo quarry

Domodedovo quarry is perhaps the most famous place in the Moscow region among geologists and lovers of fossils. It is also known as “Rybushkin ravine” and has the official status of a natural monument.

White limestone here began to be mined in the XVIII century, and industrial development continued in the XIX century. Today, the quarry is of great scientific value: its layers were formed in the Carboniferous period, when the territory was covered by a warm ancient sea.

There are fossils older than 300 million years. Odintsovo local historians who made an expedition to the quarry discovered colonial and single corals, gastropods, brachiopods, sponges, fuzulin, needles and plates of sea urchins. The collection was replenished by a part of the shell of the extinct nautilus of the genus Moskvatseras and mineralogical samples: manganese dendrites and calcite crystals.

Geologists have found in Domodedovo quarry the remains of sea urchins Archaeocidaris age about 315 million years. These are fragments of shells and needles of an ancient family that inhabited the warm Paleozoic seas. Externally, they resembled modern hedgehogs, but had a unique structure: the shell consisted of separate lime plates that did not fuse, but adjacent to each other like shingles. Each plate had a bump for attaching powerful protective needles longer than 10 centimeters. Due to the mobile structure of the shell, it is very rare to find a whole hedgehog in a fossilized form: after the death of the animal, the shell quickly disintegrated into scales, and needles were carried away by currents.

Limestone samples showed that the rock consists of millions of tiny shells of ancient single-celled organisms - foraminifera of the genus Fusulina. Their limestone houses, similar to wheat grains, millions of years ago formed powerful layers of fuzuline limestone.

The most characteristic finds for the Domodedovo quarry are Chaetetes sponges, Syringopora corals, Choristites shells. In the quarry preserved imprints of ammonites, ancient sponges and even traces of movement of marine organisms on the bottom. Kirill Yushin, a lecturer at the Department of General Geology and Geo-Mapping at the Moscow State University, calls this place unique: It is actually an ancient seabed. There are traces left by various mollusks and other inhabitants. It is amazing that such things persist hundreds of millions of years later.”.

Other places in the suburbs

In addition to the Domodedovo quarry, there are other paleontologically significant locations in the region. In the XIX century and the first half of the XX century, ammonite shells and belemnite rosters were found in abundance along the banks of the Moscow River and its tributaries. Muscovites gave the name “lamb horns” to the Ammonites, and “devil fingers” to the Belemnites. Residents of the Serpukhov district called the ammonites “devil seals”, and the belemnites – “grandfather’s fingers”.

In the Peski quarry (about 100 kilometers from Moscow, near the Peski railway station), sedimentary rocks of the Jurassic period were uncovered. Here are found the teeth of sharks, bradiodonts, elements of the skeleton of ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and even the remains of dinosaurs. In the location of Horlovo, undorosaurs are established - Jasykovia sumini, J. mitta, Undorosaurus horlovensis. In the Lopatinsky phosphorite mine (Voskresensky district) there are also remains of ichthyosaurs.

These findings allow scientists to study the ancient climate and restore the appearance of the disappeared seas. As explained by the Deputy Director of Geohi RAS, doctor of geological and mineralogical sciences Ruslan Gabdullin, such findings help to study the climate of the past, the temperature and salinity of water, as well as to establish what organisms lived on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago. This information is essential for paleogeographic reconstructions and allows a better understanding of climate change. In addition, mineral deposits can be associated with marine sediments.

Career "Sands": the birthplace of the suburban Diplodok

The uniqueness of the "Sands" is that 166 million years ago on this place the sea was just advancing, and in the karst cavities filled with clays, the remains of a variety of fish, amphibians, primitive turtles, crocodiles and mammals, as well as the teeth of predatory dinosaurs-theropods, were preserved. The vertebrae, found in 1997, were believed to be the remains of marine reptiles for more than 20 years, until re-examination showed that they belonged to a dinosaur close to dicreosaurids - short-necked sauropods with long spines around the neck.

How did this sensational find happen? In 1997, a student of the geological faculty of Moscow State University Alexander Vydrik found two large vertebrae. For more than 20 years they lay in the window of the museum, until re-examination with additional cleaning did not allow to establish: these vertebrae belong to a herbivorous dinosaur from the sauropod group - the first find of sauropods in the Jurassic sediments of the European part of Russia. The owner of the vertebrae belongs to the superfamily Diplodocoidea, the most famous representative of which is the Late Jurassic Diplodocus from the United States.

Jurassic Paleofauna with pearl

Located in the Resurrection district, this mine (quarries No. 5 and No. 9) reveals the deposits of the Upper Jurassic. Here you can collect a good collection of Jurassic Paleofauna: spiral shells of ammonites, often with preserved mother of pearl, belemnite rosters, bivalves and even the bones of ichthyosaurs.

In quarry No. 9 near the village of Khorlovo, partially preserved jaws of the ichthyosaur Ophthalmosaurus sp. with teeth were found. Among the ammonites are genera Craspedites, Kachpurites, Epivirgatites, Dorsoplanites, Virgatites, including Virgatites pallasianus and V. virgatus.

Gzhel is not only a famous porcelain, but also a unique geological monument. Here are the rocks of the Gzhel layer of the upper carbon, and it is this section that is the stratotype (standard) for the whole world.

The age of the sediments is about 300 million years. In the course of a detailed study, numerous skeletons (about 1000 specimens) of small hypercalcified sponges were found here, including those new to the science of genera and species. The section at the railway station "55 km" is open rocks Kasimov and Gzhel layers of upper carbon.

The village of Myachkovo in the Ramenskoye district is one of the most historic places. From the local limestone, formed from the fossilized remains of marine organisms, white-stone Moscow was built. Here was found the first near Moscow starfish, described in 1867 by Professor of Moscow University Shchurovsky.

In the Myachkov quarries, the richest complexes of sea lilies, including new species, were discovered, and the Myachkov Monolith is a unique monolith with the remains of invertebrates of 1.65 × 2.93 meters, stored in the museum.

Paramonov ravine is the largest geological monument in the Dmitrov district, where rocks come to the surface naturally, rather than in quarries. Here exposed the sands of the Cretaceous period and Jurassic clays.

In the sediments were found fossilized remains of marine inhabitants of the Paleozoic period: trillobites, belemnites, ammonites, as well as teeth of ancient sharks and fragments of reptiles. Ammonites from Paramonov differ in safety from the Yahroma - they are not "rusty", which makes them especially valuable for collections.

Polushkin quarries on the banks of the Moscow River (opposite the village of Grigorovo) are not only a paleontological, but also a historical monument. Limestone was mined here in the early XIX century, and today it is an official geological monument of nature.

The quarries have an extensive network of caves with their own names – “The Lost World”, “Rhino Nose”, “Viper Cave”. Here lives a unique species of plants listed in the Red Book. The cut is the wall of an old limestone quarry where coal deposits can be studied.

Pirochinsky quarry is another location in the Kolomna district, capable of replenishing the collection with the richest collection of fossils of the Carboniferous and Jurassic periods. The quarry reveals the deposits of the Podolsk horizon of the Moscow tier (age 315-307 million years).

In the northeastern part of the quarry are found corals, sponges, brachiopods. Among the finds are bellerophone (ancient mollusk), nautilus Stenopoceras rouilleri and conocardium - an internal cast of the shell with a sealing fingerprint of the flaps. For mineralogists, there is also a life here - for example, delvoxite.