2,000 volunteers join a painstaking effort to restore massive skeleton of prehistoric predator
Over 2,000 volunteers are assisting scientists at Warsaw's Copernicus Science Centre in the meticulous restoration of a 240-million-year-old Mastodonsaurus skeleton. The project allows the public to participate in the delicate process of removing rock from prehistoric fossils.
Why it matters
This initiative highlights the growing trend of citizen science, where public participation accelerates complex research and fosters engagement with natural history.
Volunteers armed with chisels, brushes and protective goggles chip away at rock encasing the bones of a massive prehistoric amphibian in a glass-walled laboratory on the ground floor of Warsaw's Copernicus Science Centre.
On the other side of the wall, visitors watch the work unfold on the bones of the nearly six metre (20 foot)-long skeleton. Children point with excitement while parents contemplate the creature the massive bones once belonged to. The painstaking restoration is part of an unusual public science project. More than 2,000 volunteers are helping Polish scientists restore the skeleton of the Mastodonsaurus, a fearsome aquatic predator from around the dawn of the dinosaur age.
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