PRESERVED HISTORY

The exhibition is based on 50 photographic prints depicting paleontological specimens collected from the bottom of the Kremenchuk Reservoir. The specimens were discovered by Ihor Chernikov, an international-class diver and the founder of the museum "History of Hradyzk: From the Dnipro Floodplains to the Kremenchuk Reservoir". The scientific identification of the found specimens was conducted by Vitalii Dernov, Senior Researcher at the Department of Stratigraphy and Paleontology of Paleozoic Deposits of the Institute of Geological Sciences of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv). The photographs were taken by Maryna Bezsmolna, Director of the Local History Museum of Horishni Plavni. Design by Yevhen Chornobai. Large-scale photographs allow for a clearer view of the structure and features of even small fossils (for example, shark and fish teeth, coral remains up to 1 cm in size, etc.). Larger specimens sometimes feature visual magnification of individual elements, making it possible to see the detailed structure of the fossil. Among them are: a limonite concretion, a shell core of an oncocerid (cephalopod mollusk) Culullus sp., Hindia sp. sponges, a trilobite pygidium, early corals, a matrix of fossilized algae, dorsal valves of brachiopod shells Spirifer sp. and Gigantoproductus sp., voids from stem segments of crinoids (echinoderms), fragments of Ventriculites sp. sponges, a colonial coral Lonsdaleia sp., a limestone slab with brachiopods Echinoconchus sp. and Derbyia sp., a cephalopod shell with quartz crystals on the surface of the phragmocone septa, a shell fragment of an actinocerid, spiriferid Spirifer sp. valves with perforations (traces of commensalism) by Platyceras gastropods, coral Corwenia densivesiculosa Dobrolyubova (1958), a dorsal valve of a Dictyoclostus sp. brachiopod, coral Diphyphyllum vermiculare (Stuckenberg), mineralized wood, Eocene shark teeth, sandstone with plant impressions, a mammoth tusk fragment and teeth, remains of cave bear forms Ursus deningeri and Ursus spelaeus, and the teeth of various mammoths and elephants: the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogonterii), Khazar mammoth (Mammuthus trogonterii chosaricus), intermediate mammoth (Mammuthus intermedius), and the straight-tusked elephant (Paleoloxodon antiquus).