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
Sea urchin with just six species known from the Permian period. Only two lineages survived this period's massive extinction and into the Triassic: the genus "Miocidaris", which gave rise to modern cidaroida (pencil urchins), and the ancestor that gave rise to the euechinoids. By the upper Triassic, their numbers increased again. Cidaroids have changed very little since the Late Triassic, and are the only Paleozoic echinoid group to have survived. The euechinoids diversified into new lineages in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and from them emerged the first irregular echinoids (the Atelostomata) during the early Jurassic. Some echinoids, such as "Micraster" in