| Popis: |
The Ice Age Geopark (IAG) is a landscape and architectural model of the ancient Late Pleistocene (45-11 kya BP) natural environment of the last epoch of Vistula (Würm, Valdai) glaciation when giant animals of the so-called mammoth fauna inhabited the study area. Today, it is a natural geological landmark ‘Starunia’, which acquired this status in 1984. In addition to fossil mammals, among the IAG’s objects are eleven types of mineralized water sources, the only active mud volcano in the Carpathians, a number of oil volcanoes, a gas flare burning from the 1940s over the borehole ‘Nadiia’, and the remains of concrete foundations of oil boreholes and others. The first carcasses of mammoth Mammuthus primigenius Blum., embalmed with salt and bitumen, and woolly rhinoceros Rinoceros antignitatis Bium were recovered from the depths of 12.5 m and 17.6 м, respectively, from the mine №4 (“Mammoth”) during the development of the ozokerite deposit in 1907 on the SW border of the Starunia village, Bohorodchany district Ivano-Frankivsk region. In 1929, an expedition of the Academy of Arts and Sciences from Krakiw, investigating the mine at the depth of 17 m, found the remains of three woolly rhinoceroses. Such artifacts became the objects of the proposal to create an Ice Age Geopark in Starunia, the project of which was completed in 2006 by Associate Professor D.O. Zorin and Head of Starunia village I.V. Mosiuk. The natural environment of mammoth fauna – periglacial tundra – was reconstructed by joint Ukrainian-Polish expeditions of 2004–2005 and 2007–2009 using the methods of palynological, paleocarpological, malacofauna analyses and determination of the absolute age by 14C dating. (M. Kotarba, R. Stakhovych-Rybka, T. Sokolovskyi, etc.). In 2019, an ecological-cultural project “Small Cities – Great Impressions” of the Starunia Village Council and the Association of Village, Town Councils and United Communities of Ukraine, the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine with the participation of the Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical University of Oil and Gas was implemented. To simulate the figures of mammoth, rhino, deer and hunter-cutter the technique of Topiar Art, known since Roman times was used. On October 26, 2019, the Festival-opening of IAG was held with ca. 17,000 visitors. The real implementation of the scientific idea has begun. |
