No one knew about paleontologists when dinosaurs were running around the hot and steaming globe. Then the dinosaurs died out and very many years passed before the first paleontologist started digging up evidence to tell the world about its past.
The prehistoric world had all kinds of dinosaurs and Archaeopteryxes; it was a world still undivided into continents, with volcanoes everywhere. Unrecorded history has always fascinated children. In the West, this fascination turned into a lucrative business: movies, animated cartoons, books, and computer games dedicated to the time of yore.
In Ukraine, thanks to the dedicated efforts of scientists, children’s interest in natural history was diverted from the purely consumer vein to the creative sphere. The National Academy’s Museum of Paleontology, which Prof. Leonid Rakovets considers the best in Europe, runs a children’s paleontology study group, perhaps the only one of its kind in Europe. Its inception was sponsored by scientists of world repute and it is guided by Volodymyr Svystun, one of the first to have discovered the famous early human settlement at Mezhyrichchia.
The study group is small, but the young paleontologists’ love for history and truly selfless work (sacrificing their vacations) have yielded rich fruit. Digging in subway construction sites they have made remarkable discoveries: mammoth and auroch bones, prehistoric shark teeth, and giant deer antlers, testifying that once this city of three-million was at the bottom of an ocean later supplanted by thick forest.
Andriy Pryskoka, one of the young researchers, says that this thick forest must have done away with the giant deer. Their antlers got caught in tree branches, making them easy prey to predators or our ancestors.
“I’m very fond of nature, of all living things,” says the boy. “I would never kill a worm, because all things around us have meaning. Man and nature influence one another. If man weren’t so cruel, the history of mankind would have perhaps turned out happier.”
In fact, their discoveries in Kyiv proved so rich the museum allocated a special stand for the young paleontologists’ first exhibit called “Prehistoric Kyiv.” Hopefully, it will be followed by expositions like “Prehistoric Dnipro Basin,” “Prehistoric Carpathian Mountains,” etc. The young explorers burn with enthusiasm. Who knows what they will dig up next, especially if they have an excavator.






