True lemurs and lorisids

The exhibition “True lemurs and lorisids” presents our most distant relatives and the most charming primates, their habits and general life style. For the first time in Russia, here you can see one of the most remarkable anthropological discoveries of the last decade, a 47 million year old fossil imprint of the lemur Ida. This discovery is still a reason for many scientific debates.

A fossil skeleton of a primitive primate “Darwinius masillae” was found in Germany in 1983. About 20 years later, this discovery was studied by the Norwegian scientists who named it Ida and identified its age (47 million years old). The further studies showed that, despite expectations, the prehistorical primate is not related to human ancestors. Ida is a transitional form between primitive true lemurs and more progressive monkeys.

In 2015 a Norwegian scientist Jørn Harald Hurum gave an exact copy of the discovery as a gift to the State Darwin Museum and now it will be presented as a part of the exhibition. The amazing preservation of the item allows discerning not only the bones but also the traces of fur, ears and even the contents of the ancient stomach.  

The exhibition displays scientific editions of the XVIII-XIXth centuries with various colourful illustrations depicting how exactly scientists of the past imagined inhabitants of the tropics.

Актуальные мероприятия

выставка в дар музею