The majority of the exhibit's
dinosaur skeletons were discovered during Polish-Mongolian expeditions to the
Gobi Desert in the 1960s and 1970s under the direction of Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska. The gigantic skeletal replica of the enormous plant-eating sauropod dinosaur
Opisthocoelicaudia fills practically the whole main exhibition hall at the Museum of Evolution.
Nemegtosaurus, a separate sauropod dinosaur from the Gobi, whose skull was put on this skeletal reconstruction, was discovered a few kilometres from Opisthocoelicaudia's skeleton. However, other palaeontologists claim that the skull and the skeleton belong to the same species. bone Other specimens from the Gobi, besides Opisthocoelicaudia, can be found in the museum's largest exhibition hall, including fossilised dinosaur eggs, the remains of early horned (
ceratopsian) and armoured (
ankylosaur) dinosaurs, as well as the tiny skulls of
Cretaceous mammals that coexisted with the giant dinosaurs and lived in their shadow. The Krasiejów locality's actual "gemstone" turned revealed to be
Silesaurus, a prehistoric relative of dinosaurs. The second major focus of the Museums' exhibition is on the skeletons of various terrestrial and marine species, as well as live reconstructions of such animals. The Museum also has other Polish fossils on exhibit, including the oldest frog skeleton ever discovered, which was revealed in Triassic rocks from the area of
Cracow. The casts of
pterosaurs and early birds from the renowned German
Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, which are some of the best fossil specimens confirming Darwin's theory of evolution, are among the other displays. The Mammal Evolution Hall has a realistic reconstruction of the
Australopithecus '
Lucy,' which was made by sculptor Marta Szubert under the direction of Karol Sabath, a Polish evolutionary popularizer. == References ==