Paleo Accuracy Review of the Kalamas Museum!

The Museum of Kalamas River

In my village there is a Museum that is part of an organisation about the biodiversity of Kalamas, Acheron and the island of Corfu. It is very interesting, because it has a lot of things about the diversity of the deltas of Kalamas to see and learn. But it also has things about a diversity that existed before the one that exists now: the diversity of the Tethys Sea. It doesn't only have fossils, but also some rocks. And being the palaeontology guy that I am, I'm going to check the accuracy of the paleontology-themed information.

A delta Of the Kalamas River

Reviewing The Accuracy

The Fossil-Themed Part Of the Museum has a small collection of ammonoids preserved in ammonitico rosso limestone, along with some other cephalopods from the middle-late jurassic.

There are 5 specimens : 2 large ones, which are the ones you see in the photo, and 3 small ones. The one that is most well preserved is on the right side of the picture. All the others are not in very good condition but not in bad condition either. Also, it's not the museum's fault. There are as well more fossils on the left rock that I spotted, which unfortunately were not in as good a quality as the main one. Still, all fossils are fossils. Right next to the ammonoids was a large sign. The sign had a lot of information and some slight misinformation. First, the sign called the first fossils "ammonites". This term should not have been used, and that is because these creatures were not only ammonites, but also other relatives such as ammonoids. There were also mollusk fossils on the sign, which I couldn't get a good look at because I could not reach them, although I could still identify them. Going back to the ammonoids, there was also some paleo-art on the sign, depicting an ammonite on the sea floor, which is outdated. Although we don't know much about the lifestyle of an ammonoid, based on their living relatives, the nautiloids, or experiments done with replicas of their shells, we do know that to swim they used only a thin, tubular structure called a siphon to pump air through the inner chambers of the shell, which scientists believe helped provide buoyancy and keep the ammonites moving through the water. Later the sign said they first appeared 243 million years ago, which is false. All members of the ammonoidea (including ammonoids and ammonitids, so-called "ammonites") first appeared in the fossil record about 350 million years ago. But the sign also had many good things in it. And with the help of the museum owner, who gave me a tour, you would learn a lot of up-to-date and accurate information, such as the actual fossilization modes, how the rocks were formed, what Tethys was, and much more. So, with all that said, I give this museum a Paleo-Accuracy review of...

9,8/10. It was good, I suggest you go see it too! Even though the signs might have slight innacuracies in them, this museum was amazing!

See you! 

First Edition: 9th Of November, 2022