Exhibition 'Our Origins'

About exhibition

The town of Berezovsky was founded on January 11, 1965, but its history began long before that. It's hard to believe now, but an ancient warm sea once lapped these shores. The remains of the earliest skeletal organisms from the Cambrian period, found in the Barzas River, form a large paleontological collection and are displayed immediately at the entrance to the hall. The centerpiece of the hall is the oldest coal on the planet — sapromixite. It was formed from the remains of Devonian plants that grew about 400 million years ago, in the Paleozoic era. In the 1930s the world's only mine for its extraction, 'Barzasskaya-1', was built and operated for a short time. The hall also presents in detail the history and daily life of the early settlers, and the story of the development of the coal industry is complemented by an account of the founding of the mining town.