Volunteers help uncover massive fossilized skeleton

More than 2,000 volunteers from various professions gathered in Poland to help uncover the skeleton of one of the largest amphibian predators in the world. Paleontologists considered the skeleton groundbreaking, as it was nearly complete.

Paleontologists digging in southern Poland discovered the Mastodonsaurus skeleton in 2023. Local construction workers and residents in southern Poland helped paleontologist and professor Tomasz Sulej’s team unearth the fossil. The skeleton measured nearly 20 feet long and weighed over 2,800 pounds, making it the largest known Mastodonsaurus skeleton in the world, Sulej said. Warsaw’s Copernicus Science Center, which housed the skeleton and was tasked with its restoration, characterized the near-complete skeleton as one of the best-preserved specimens in the history of global paleobiology.

Who worked to restore the skeleton? Volunteers were invited to help carefully remove the rock encasing the skeleton, and over 2,000 respondents received special training before taking two-hour shifts. Volunteers removed the rock encasing the skeleton millimeter by millimeter using a fine-tipped chisel under professional supervision at the Center, according to the Associated Press. The volunteers are managers, cleaners, tattoo artists, and more, turning the restorative work into a unique public science project, the Associated Press reported. Visitors to the center are able to watch the project through a glass wall, observing the volunteers at work while also seeing the sheer size of the skeleton.

Scientists describe the Mastodonsaurus as an aquatic ambush predator thought to have lived mostly in Europe’s freshwater lakes and rivers. Scientists hypothesize that it had a broad, flat head, long jaws, sharp conical teeth, and in many ways resembled a crocodile, despite not being in the reptile family.