Not everyone knows that the Moscow metro is a kind of paleontological museum. In the lining of many stations you can see traces of ancient creatures. The marble of the capital's subway contains hundreds of fossils - fossils. Alexander Mironenko, a researcher at the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, told Metrostroevets how to find traces of prehistoric creatures in the decoration of the metro.
Fossils in the Moscow metro are marine invertebrates: shells of mollusks and brachiopods, stems of sea lilies, needles of sea urchins. Corals and sponges are also found. Theoretically, individual bones of fish or marine reptiles could be found in the lining, but so far there have been no such finds.
For searching for fossils, stations lined with the “right” stone are suitable: marble and marble-like limestone. The main thing is where and under what conditions the precipitation accumulated, which eventually became part of the finishing. It depends on what you find and in what quantity.
For example, the oldest fossils dating back more than 420 million years are discovered in white-gray marble from the Chelyabinsk region. Young (about 145 million years old) - in marbleized limestones brought from Crimea. The most beautiful fossils are found in red-brown marbled limestone from Georgia (about 190 million years old). The age of the fossils in orange Italian marble is 150 – 160 million years.
– In general, the most rich in the number of large and interesting finds is the “Park Pobedy” station. Spiral-coiled ammonite shells can be seen in almost every column there, notes the paleontologist. – There are many fossils at the stations “Ilyich Square”, “Electrozavodskaya”, “Dobryninskaya”, “Kashirskaya”, “Arbatskaya”. There are a lot of corals at Krasnoselskaya, and at the transition from Tsvetnoy Boulevard to Trubnaya there are sea snails.
Mironenko has been interested in paleontology since childhood. He began studying subway walls in search of ancient invertebrates while still in college. In 2004, he created a thematic website – paleometro.ru, where he posted his collection of photographs of fossils. This resource was the first to tell a wide range of readers about fossils in the underground. For 15 years now, the site has been constantly updated and supplemented.
Fossils in the capital’s metro came from different regions of Russia and countries. At the same time, local fossils can also be found on the territory of Moscow. Not at stations, but during tunneling. The local soils contain skeletons of crinoids, shells of cephalopods, bivalves and brachiopods, as well as rostra of belemnites (sometimes called the “devil’s finger”). In the thickness of the Jurassic clays one comes across individual bones and teeth, and sometimes entire skeletons of marine reptiles - ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Such finds are not only collectible, but also of significant scientific interest.