Kotelnich the uniqueness of the landmark, the only comparable sight being Karoo, South Africa. Annually Russian and foreign scientists find skeleton fragments and bones of ancient animals of the Permian period of Palaeozoic era, Triassic and Jurassic periods of Mesozoic era. Paleontological museum of Kotelnich was opened in 1994. It exhibits both the findings from the excavation site in Kotelnich, and the replicas of the most famous findings from Germany, the USA, and Mongolia. The exposition of the museum shows the global geological and evolution processes that took place on Earth about 200 million years ago. The workers of the museum
Geology of the United States most places formed of pieces of continental crust that are over one billion years old. In the south, an older mountain range was formed 300 million years ago, then eroded away. The rocks of that older range were reformed into the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains took shape during a period of intense plate tectonic activity that formed much of the rugged landscape of the western United States. Three major mountain-building episodes reshaped the west from about 170 to 40 million years ago (Jurassic to Cenozoic Periods). The last mountain building event, the Laramide orogeny, (about 70-40 million years ago)