Ordovician collections stored at the National Museum of Natural History of the NAS of Ukraine

Abstract

We reviewed our department’s collections dealing with the Ordovician System, stored at the National Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NMNH NAS). The first investigation of the Ordovician palaeontology of Ukraine was published by the Romanian researcher T. Vascâuţsanu before the Second World War. The study of the Ordovician sections during the 1960s was related to geological prospecting. Most outcrops along the Dniester River in the middle of the valley were available for study before the construction of the dam of the Novodniestrovski Hydropower Station, which raised the level of the reservoir near the dam to 60 m. The reservoir is 198 km long and has covered outcrops ranging from the Ediacaran to the Pridoli. Ordovician fossils are represented by diverse remains of brachiopods, molluscs, corals, bryozoans, graptolites, echinoderms, conodonts, and others.