More than 2,000 volunteers are participating in a meticulous public science project to restore the skeleton of a Mastodonsaurus, a massive prehistoric amphibian that lived around 240 million years ago. The work is taking place in a glass-walled laboratory at Warsaw’s Copernicus Science Centre, where visitors can observe the painstaking process.
Volunteers, who come from diverse professional backgrounds including managers and tattoo artists, are trained and equipped with protective gear to handle the delicate task of separating bone from rock. Using pneumatic chisels and ultraviolet light to distinguish between fossilized bone and surrounding material, they work in two-hour supervised sessions. Tatyana Kozyk, coordinator of the volunteer teams, described the experience as profound, noting the feeling of being the first human to touch bones that have lain underground for 240 million years.
The Mastodonsaurus was one of the largest amphibians ever to exist, inhabiting Earth's waters during the Middle Triassic period, as the earliest dinosaurs were emerging. Scientists estimate it could reach nearly six meters (20 feet) in length, possessing a broad, flat head, long jaws, and sharp conical teeth, bearing a resemblance to a crocodile but belonging to a different evolutionary lineage.
Discovered in southern Poland in 2023 by paleontologist Tomasz Sulej and geologist Wojciech Pawlak, the skeleton is believed to be the largest Mastodonsaurus ever found. Weighing 1,300 kilograms (2,865 pounds), its complete restoration is expected to make it the largest skeleton of its kind exhibited in a museum worldwide. Sulej, a professor at the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, highlighted that the skeleton's unique body structure offers entirely new information for the scientific community.
While other Mastodonsaurus skeletons have been unearthed in Germany and Russia, they are significantly smaller, measuring around 2 to 3 meters (6½ to 10 feet) long. Dorota Serafin, a 51-year-old manager volunteering for the project, found the work to be both "relaxing and philosophical, even mystical."
The restoration is anticipated to be completed and the skeleton exhibited in October or November. Participants noted that the Mastodonsaurus, which lived after a major mass extinction and before the rise of dinosaurs, offers a perspective on survival and resilience. Sulej suggested that the amphibian's existence provides a message of hope, demonstrating that "nature always manages" and life finds ways to persist, even in the face of significant environmental change.