15 animals that lived on the territory of Ukraine in prehistoric times
Millions of years ago, when the Carpathians and the Dnipro River were the bottom of the ocean, dinosaurs, huge dinosaurs, woolly rhinos, giant sharks, and other amazing animals lived on the territory of modern Ukraine. Today, Ukrainians still find traces of extinct fauna even in their gardens: teeth, bones, and fossils. We are going to tell you about the most interesting prehistoric animals that once lived on Ukrainian lands.
Ancient southern elephants
Southern elephants, which lived 3-5 million years ago, are considered to be larger than their African relatives: they reached a height of 4.5 meters. They mostly lived on the coast of the Sea of Azov. Their population was so numerous that locals built fences from the bones of these animals. In the 1940s, archaeologists discovered a well-preserved skeleton of a southern elephant near Berdiansk.
Dinoterias
Dinoteria at the National Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine
Ancient mammals that lived on earth 20-2 million years ago reached a height of 5 meters and weighed about 15 tons. The remains of one of these animals were found near Mariupol. Initially, scientists thought they had unearthed a mammoth, but after examination, they confirmed with an 80% probability that it was a dinotherium.
Woolly rhinoceros
Prehistoric woolly rhinos, which weighed about three tons and reached a height of 2 meters and a length of 4 meters, lived on the territory of Melitopol ten thousand years ago. Modern residents of the city still find the bones of the animals in their gardens and on the seashore. Scientists were able to restore the appearance of woolly rhinos thanks to the rock paintings of our ancestors. Rhinos had thick wool that protected them from the cold, as well as horns that were used to protect them from enemies. One such horn could reach a weight of 15 kg.
Cephalopod belemnites
A well-preserved fossil of the species Clarkeiteuthis conocauda
Not far from Kyiv, the remains of ancient cephalopods, the belemnites, which lived in the region from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous period, i.e., from 516 to 66 million years ago. They became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic, have been found.
Belemnites looked very much like squids. Today, they are usually found as massive growths that look like stone balls or limestone “horns.” Our ancestors believed that these were the broken off fingers of devils and called them “devil’s fingers”. They are also known as “cooled” lightning bolts or “thunder arrows”. Scientists believe that these ancient animals used their rostrums to burrow into the soil. They swam like squids, with their rostrums facing forward.
Plesiosaurs
These reptiles lived on Earth between 145 and 66 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous period. Their remains were discovered in the Kharkiv region, near the town of Izium, twice: in 1899 and in the 1990s. The huge prehistoric lizards were up to 4 meters tall and perfectly adapted to life in water bodies. The size of their forelimbs was about 1 meter. Plesiosaurs ate fish and other reptiles. According to one theory, the famous Loch Ness monster is the last representative of plesiosaurs.
Three-toed horses
Limbs of Anchitherium equinum
Cetacean whales
About 10 million years ago, when Zaporizhzhia region was the bottom of the Sarmatian Sea, this area was home to cetacean whales. These marine mammals reached a length of up to 10 meters. Archaeologists have discovered skeletal fragments of extinct animals, including fragments of ribs and vertebrae. This is very rare and a great success for scientists.
Crustaceans
Imprint of a crustacean (Eurypterus remipes DeKay, 1825)
In Khmelnytskyi, archaeologists have discovered the ancestors of modern scorpions that lived approximately 427 million years ago during the Paleozoic era. These arthropods, known as crustaceans, were 10 to 50 cm long, although scientists believe that some of them were up to 2–3 meters long.
Cave hyenas
Cave hyenas appeared in what is now the Lviv region about 85,000 years ago, when Ukraine was no longer part of the World Ocean and became mostly land. These animals are representatives of prehistoric fauna, and their size reached up to 2 meters. Today, descendants of cave hyenas can be found only in Africa.
Sea lilies
One of the oldest exhibits preserved in Odesa is the exoskeleton of a sea lily, a relative of sea urchins and stars, which, according to scientists, is more than 500 million years old. This specimen was an inhabitant of the ancient Tethys Ocean. It is important to note that the sea lily is not actually a flower, it is a predatory animal, has needles on its skin and tentacles that it uses to capture prey.
The body of sea lilies consisted of a goblet-shaped or rounded calyx and a long articulated stem. The calyx was covered by a carapace of hard plates of regular polygonal shape, from which radially extended “arms” that helped to capture food and bring it closer to the mouth.
Cave bears
Skeleton of a cave bear
10-15 thousand years ago, cave bears, which reached 3.5 meters in length, lived on the territory of the Dnipro region. Unlike their descendants, these bears were vegetarians. Scientists believe that their extinction was due to the reduction of forests, the main source of food.
Basilosaurs
Marine basilosaurs are considered primitive ancestors of modern whales that lived in the Cherkasy region approximately 30-40 million years ago. These marine predators reached a length of up to 40 meters, making them the largest marine life that has ever existed. Their weight averaged 15-18 tons. In comparison, the largest modern whale, the blue whale, can reach a maximum length of about 33 meters.
Red deer
A rare find was discovered in the Kharkiv region – the remains of a red deer. In the 90s, a resident of Izyum was swimming in the Siverskyi Donets River and accidentally discovered a snag that turned out to be the horns of a prehistoric mammal.
Megalodon sharks
Megalodons, which reached a length of 15 meters and weighed up to 12 tons, lived in the waters that are now the territory of the city of Dnipro about 60 million years ago, when an ocean covered the area. Those waters were also home to giant jellyfish and ammonites, mollusks with surprisingly beautiful shells. Like modern sharks, Megalodons were predators and fed on large animals, including cetaceans, pinnipeds, and fish.
