Collections of the Paleontology Museum of Tomsk State University and their significance for the cognition of the biosphere evolution

The Paleontology Museum of Tomsk State University stores numerous remains of organisms characterizing almost all the Phanerozoic periods. The museum was established by Professor V.A. Khakhlov in 1926 and combined the prime rare collections donated by sponsors (Maximilian de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg; Professor G. Trautschold, and others) by the time of its opening in 1888. Besides, early in the 20th century, the museum displays were replenished with Siberian collections gathered by geologists during field works. Early in the Paleozoic (the Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian periods), life was concentrated only in the aqueous environment as evidenced by remains of marine invertebrates and algae. In the end of the Caledonian tectogenesis epoch late in the Silurian, the prime vascular plants Rhyniophites appeared, and since the middle Devonian the flora became more diverse: fern plants and prime cor-daites emerged. The fauna also became more perfect: different fishes, invertebrates and microfauna (ostracodes, conodonts, foraminifera and others) inhabited the marine and closed basins. The Carboniferous is characterized by dendritic plant forms: lepidodendrons, pteri-dophyte, cordaites. In the air, huge dragon-flies were fluttering, on the river banks numerous amphibians stegocephalians were dwelling. All this is exposed in the museum as plant imprints and the displays of different marine invertebrates. In the Permian period, prime reptiles appeared on the land: pareiasaurians and inostrancevia which are also exhibited both as fossil remains and on dioramas, panoramas and pictures. The organic world of the Jurassic period is presented more comprehensively. In the museum, there are imprints of fishes, dragon-flies, birds and so on from the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen schists (Nuremberg environs, Germany), many shells of ammonites, belemnites, pelecypods and other organisms. On land, forests were growing: coniferous, cycadales, ginkgoaceous. In the Jurassic, varied reptiles evolved: swimming, running and flying forms. In the show-room of the museum, moulds of microfauna (foraminifera and radio-larians) are displayed, along with those of different reptilians and mammals manufactured by firms "Sturtz" and "Krantz" in the beginning of the 19th century. Collected shells of foraminifera, radiolarians, ostracodes are deposited in the Micropaleontological Department of the Museum and in the Micropaleontological Laboratory. In the Cretaceous period angiosperms appeared; in the museum they are displayed as imprints, samples and pictures. In this period reptiles are also diversified. In the Museum's sarcophagus, two intact skeletons of the Early Cretaceous dinosaurs (Psitacosaurus sibiricus Voronkevich et Averianov) found in 1999 in Kemerovo Oblast are displayed. The remains of Paleogene and Neogene invertebrates are numerous in the museum. In the showcase there are remains of the horse's ancestor - hipparion, as well as of other animals. The full skeletons of the mammoths fauna - the mammoth, bison, woolly rhinoceros are of greatest value, because they characterize the leading group of Siberian animals in the Quaternary Period.

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