The Moscow Metro's hundred-million-year-old fossils

The next time you visit Moscow Metro, don’t visit it purely as a museum of Russian history with Communist red stars, monuments to workers, mosaics, columns and bas-reliefs. Next time, be ready to visit a museum of paleontology. / Kurskaya Metro Station

The truth is that the columns, walls, and passages of the Moscow Metro are faced with natural stones. If you look closer, you will see fossil patterns and petrifactions in the walls. Sometimes you need to crane your neck or look very closely at the columns. You will see traces of organisms that are a hundred million years old. / Belorusskaya Metro Station

Here is a group of different petrifactions. In the center is the distinct spiral shell of Gastropoda. You can easily spot that it is full of different sediments – partly sand, partly loam. Around it are the fossilized remains of crinoids. \ Dobryninskaya Metro Station

Part of a damaged needle of a sea urchin. \ Kakhovskaya Metro Station

This petrifaction indicates that there used to be a shell in this part of the stone. When the marble was sliced, this dent appeared. \ Kakhovskaya Metro Station

This petrification is rare. We can only guess, but most likely two objects grew together and knitted. Its white so-called ‘tail’ is a crinoid. It is connected to a sponge, a specimen of the biological class Demospongia \ Kashirskaya Metro Station

Marble limestone is light and petrifactions are hard to see, especially in photos. The only way to see them in detail is to increase the contrast of the image. In this photo the shell is clearly visible, likewise the tiny details. \ Trubnaya Metro Station

This is a cephalopod on the walls of the walkway between the Metro and Yaroslavskaya and Leningradskaya train stations. It is 5-6 cm long. Cephalopods have a shell divided into sections or chambers; the mollusk itself lives in the last chamber, gradually building a shell around itself with more and more layers. \ Komsomolskaya Metro Station

Partizanskaya is one of the Moscow Metro’s oldest stations. It was opened in 1944 during the war. In 2008, the station was under renovation and most of the petrifications disappeared. Only one object of interest remains: a shell in dark marble (pictured). \ Partizanskaya Metro Station

In the photo you can see a sponge organism on a column in Pervomayskaya Metro Station. Such sponges are often found in red marble. \ Pervomayskaya Metro Station

A deposit of crinoid remains on a wall inside Ploshchad Ilicha Metro Station.