Eastern Paratethys

The Paratethys originated as a marginal sea of the Tethys Ocean approximately 30 million years ago due to the formation of the alpine orogen. Their eastern part extended east of the area which today is Romania and Bulgaria to far beyond the Aral Lake and the Tarim Basin in Western China. Thus this sea had a crucial influence on the development of climate and terrestrial ecological systems of Eurasia. Due to historical developments however, the geology, stratigraphy and paleontology of wide ranges of the eastern Paratethys are insufficiently known.

In the context of different research projects and in close co-operation with scientists from Bulgaria, Romania, Moldavia and the Ukraine, we investigate partial aspects of the vertebrate paleontology, biostratigraphy and palaeoclimatology of this area from the Late Miocene to the Pliocene.