The work of artists, such as Hungarian-Canadian natural history illustrator Julius T. Csotonyi, has contributed a lot to our understanding of the time long before homo sapiens. They’ve helped us imagine the discoveries of palaeontologists in their original condition and surroundings. For example, the presence of feathers in some fossilized dinosaurs has allowed us to know their colours, which are then applied to illustrations. Intact collections of bones clarify their sizes and postures.
Visits to scholarly institutions like The Field Museum in Chicago and the ROM in Toronto can really bring discovered fossils to life, though. One’s imagination runs wild when you see FMNH PR 2081 (A.K.A. “Sue”) or ROM 3670 (nickname “Gordo”) looming above you, at lengths as large as twenty-seven metres and heights as high as four metres.
When you think about how dinosaurs roamed all of the continents, it might make you wonder what kind of beings were around in present-day Estonia. Especially when you consider how many bogs there are, with conditions that are effective at even preserving human skin, clothing, and hair—like we see with the Tollund Man from Denmark.
Alas, investigating the prehistoric remains of Estonia presents us mostly with fossils from the era before dinosaurs, perhaps a result of ice sheets destroying later fossils. In Tallinn’s Eesti Loodusmuuseum (the Estonian Museum of Natural History), there is a collection of “a little over 24,600 fossils.” Most of these were collected in Estonia, “by well-known Baltic German natural scientists in the 19th and 20th century… [showing] the primeval marine life of the Estonian territory during the Paleozoic period: trilobites, nautiloids, sea scorpions, brachiopods, placodermi and other primitive beings.” Among the shelled brachiopods that have been found in Estonia is a genus (a taxonomic group containing more than one species) called Estlandia, from northern Estonia during the Ordovician geological period that took place between 488.3 and 443.7 million years ago. In pedestrian terms, the marine creatures listed above are the “creepy crawlies” of long ago, with visual similarities found in insects and molluscs we see on dry land today.
Moreover, the Eesti Loodusmuuseum collection includes two hairy mammoth molars found near Puurmani, Jõgeva County, which “are considered to be among the youngest finds of mammoth in Northern Europe.”
The tradition of studying prehistoric creatures in Estonia runs pretty deep. As TalTech describes, “The first geological studies in Estonia were carried out in the 17th century, but systematic research started in the 19th century. In 2020, Estonia celebrated the 200th anniversary of geology education…”
Major names in Estonian palaeontology include a member of the diaspora, an Estonian-Australian by the name of Armin Öpik, brother of multilingual philologist Anna and astronomer/astrophysicist Ernst. According to a memoir published by the Australian Academy of Science, from an early age Armin Öpik would carry “a rucksack full of stones”, using microscopes and looking at trilobites.
Eventually, geology and mineralogy studies at the Estonian State University at Tartu led to a lecturer position. He served as a member of the Geological Committee that advised the Estonian Department of Mines. In the 20s and 30s, Öpik regularly published research papers, including a major monograph in 1930 about a “most unusual deposit [consisting] of interlayered oil shale and limestone beds that contain an extraordinarily well-preserved, diverse invertebrate fauna.” After fleeing Estonia with his family in 1944, Öpik taught geology at the Baltic University in Exile and eventually was given an opportunity to work in Australia, where he became known for his geological and palaeontological study of the Cambrian and Early Ordovician periods in the north of the country.
In May 2000, The Independent reported on the discovery of a “missing link,” when palaeontologist Elga Mark-Kurik found a 375 million year old jawbone (first found in 1953) among her collection. Along with “a similar fossil found in Latvia in 1964”, it fits squarely in a twenty million year gap in the fossil record, expanding record of evolution between fish and early land animals called tetrapods. Isolation and lack of communication during the Soviet occupation delayed the finding until NATO awarded Mark-Kurik and her team with a grant in the mid 90s.
More recent contributors to palaeontology include Tiiu Märss and Olev Vinn, the latter of whom is an associated professor at the University of Tartu and editor of Cambridge University Press' Journal of Paleontology. And further illumination in this field is found throughout Estonia, from early vertebrates on Saaremaa’s Sõrve peninsula to the limestone cliffs of northern Estonia.
So while a lot attention is given to the dinosaurs—alive during the Jurassic, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods of the Mesozoic Era—and Estonian palaeontological discoveries don’t get the same glory as the unearthing of something as large and dramatic as a Tyrannosaurus Rex, what they have found has been a highly useful addition to our knowledge of prehistoric times.
