Friday, March 31 at 3:00 p.m. in the Planetarium Hall.
Paleontologists from NPM-BAS – Ch. Latinka Hristova, PhD, and Vladimir Nikolov, Ph.D., are visiting RPM-Plovdiv to present in a popular language to the audience in the city of Plovdiv some of the results of research on various paleontological sites of vertebrates in Bulgaria, conducted by their team. Their stories will reveal many curious facts about what animals roamed our lands more than 7 million years ago, as well as details about the search and study of dinosaurs in our country.
The lectures are part of activities related to the promotion of the results of the scientific project “From dinosaurs to the earliest human ancestors: fundamental studies of significant moments in the history of the fauna and the past of man”, financed by the “Scientific Research” Fund.
Latinka Hristova is a paleontologist, a specialist in fossil vertebrates and in particular hyparions (three-toed horses). He received his higher education at the Faculty of Geology and Geography of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. In 2003, he successfully defended his doctoral thesis at the Institute of Geology – BAS, and since 2005 he has been working at the National Natural History Museum – BAS. He is currently a senior assistant in the Department of Paleontology and Mineralogy of the museum. In addition to hyparions, over the years he has worked with other groups of vertebrates – modern horses from material from archaeological excavations, cave bears, late Cretaceous turtles and crocodylomorphs. Her interests are in the field of vertebrate paleontology, stratigraphy, paleoecology.
When Bulgaria was like Africa
During the late Miocene (10 to about 6 million years ago), Bulgaria looked completely different. Giraffes, rhinoceroses, proboscis, hyenas, saber-toothed cats and many representatives of other animal groups that we know today from popular science films about Africa roamed the forested savannas that covered our lands. From the lecture, you will learn about the species diversity of the animals found in Bulgarian localities and the information about the environment that we extract during their research.
Vladimir Nikolov is a paleontologist, a doctoral student of the National Academy of Sciences of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, who studies the bone tissues of fossil vertebrates in Bulgaria and is actively involved in the study of the dinosaur site near the town of Trun. His work is supported by The Jurassic Foundation and the Karol Knowledge Foundation. As a paleoartist, he participated in international paleoart exhibitions, his works were used in various museums and publications, he illustrated the children’s book “Excavate! Dinosaurs: Paper Toy Palaeontology” and the cover of the Bulgarian edition of the bestseller “Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs” by Prof. Steve Brusati.
Dinosaurs in Bulgaria: significance and history of research
Only two decades ago, the idea that dinosaur remains would be discovered in Bulgaria was in the realm of science fiction. Today, two paleontological deposits of dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous period are known in our country, and the fossils collected by scientists show the presence of representatives of at least 4 groups of these impressive animals. The most exciting are the fossils from the site discovered in 2017 near the town of Trun, because they promise to fill a significant gap in our knowledge of the European dinosaur fauna from 84-83 million years ago. For the history of the study of dinosaurs in Bulgaria and their scientific importance, said paleontologist and paleoartist Vladimir Nikolov.
