News from the Research Department

Researchers and scientists from the Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum will participate in the realisation of the project that received the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR).

The project by I.Kant BFU "Palaeogeographic and palaeoecological reconstruction of biocoenosis in amber forest as a model of global climate events in the Upper Eocene" won in the RFBR grant contest.

Research group of the Institute of Environmental Management, Urban Development and Spatial Planning of the I.Kant BFU under supervision of Ph.D. in Geography, Leading Research Associate from the Geographic Faculty M.V.Lomonosov MSU, professor and researcher from I.Kant BFU Leonid Zhindarev received the RFBR grant.

The project "Palaeogeographic and palaeoecological reconstruction of biocoenosis in amber forest as a model of global climate events in the Upper Eocene" will be realised by the group of scientists and researchers from I.Kant BFU, Kaliningrad Regional Amber Museum (Andranik Manukyan, Senior Research Associate of the Amber Museum, Ph.D. in Biology, and Anna Smirnova, head of the Research and Expositional department of the Amber Museum), and AO of the P.P.Shirshov Institute of Oceanology RAS.

The key goal of the project is to discover palaeogeographic and bioecological consequences of the global climate changes in the turn of the Palaeogene and Neogene, as well as to study the Palaeogene history of the biosphere as synthesis of the classically and biologically oriented palaeontology using the example of the largest in the Earth history terrestrial lagerstatte (location rich on paleontologic information) – Baltic amber.

On the basis of the palaeoecological reconstruction of the amber forest the processes of bio-ecological transformation of terrestrial communities on the border between the Palaeogene and Neogene will be researched, including evaluation of the processes of extinction, survival, and evolutionary transformations caused by the palaeoclimate changes; succession of taxonomic, zoogeographical elements in the Neogene communities.

Results of the work can be used for the long-term prognosis of the geoecological and biological consequences of the climate changes.