About 150 million years ago, Iran was under an ocean called "Tethys". It is believed that the Mazandaran (Caspian) Sea and Lake Urmia, which are located in the northern parts of Iran, are the remnants of that great ocean, and most of the present-day land of Iran emerged from the water after the Tethys dried up. The gradual subsidence of water in Tethys has resulted in the collection of a large number of fossils of marine creatures in different parts of Iran. These fossils are found even in dry and desert areas of Iran, such as Yazd. For this reason, a museum named “Cambrian Paleontology Museum” has been established in Yazd to study paleontology and display fossils from millions of years ago in a specialized way.

The History and Features of the Cambrian Paleontology Museum

The Cambrian Museum is considered a paleontological museum. This museum is the only one in Iran specializing in paleontology. Paleontology speaks of hundreds of millions of years ago, that too, in the language of fossils, many of which have secrets hidden in them! Most of the fossils on display in this museum are the remains of marine organisms.

The fossils that are on display in the Cambrian Museum have been discovered in the geographical area of Yazd Province and its surrounding areas. Among these fossils, there are some important ones belonging to the Cambrian era, which are unique in the world. The dimensions of these fossils are about four centimeters and are related to the first types of multicellular organisms of that era. In the Cambrian era, life was in its first form and large animals had not yet formed, but in later periods, larger fossils known as “macrofossils” appeared. There are different types of these fossils in the Cambrian Museum, the diameter of the largest of which is 67 cm, and the length of the longest one is 135 cm. The age of fossils is guessed and their type is identified according to their category. The existence of nearly 400 fossils in this museum has enriched it to a great extent. These fossils provide scientists with very valuable information about the geological formations of Yazd.

The Cambrian Paleontology Museum is a private museum founded by Mojtaba Pejmanpour in the year 2018 AD. Pejmanpour started collecting and studying fossils when he was a teenager, and he personally takes care of fossils and handles such affairs as removing sediments.

Items on Display in the Cambrian Paleontology Museum

Most of the fossils in the museum belong to “Nautiloids”, a group of marine cephalopods, which originated in the Late Cambrian and are represented today by the living Nautilus and Allonautilus. The body structure of Nautilus has not changed compared to millions of years ago, that’s why scientists called this animal a “living fossil”. The ancestors of today’s nautilus were at the top of the food pyramid 470 million years ago and were the undisputed owners of the seas. Over millions of years, the Nautiloid shell became spherical and gradually took on more complex and irregular shapes. The secret of this transformation has not yet been discovered by anyone. According to scientists, 65.5 million years ago, together with many species of dinosaurs, Nautiloids also disappeared to a large extent.

Except for cephalopods, gastropods are also the dominant species in the museum. Snails are the most familiar species of gastropods that have adapted to land and sea. There are different types of fossils of marine species of snails in the Cambrian Museum. These species lived nearly 500 million years ago and cover a wide range of shapes.

Bivalves are a class of mollusks with two-piece shells that, unlike cephalopods and gastropods, do not have eyes and do not feed on plants, instead they are filter feeders and are responsible for purifying seawater. Bivalves do not have moving organs and are fixed on the sea floor. Scientists are of the opinion that the number of bivalve species is more than 30 thousand, but they can be divided into two general categories: symmetrical and asymmetrical. In the Cambrian Paleontology Museum, one can see interesting examples of bivalves, including a species called “Pina”, which - due to its special shape - may be mistaken for dinosaur teeth. Pina had a sharp edge with which it entered the sediment of the sea floor and settled in it.

Brachiopods are another class of invertebrates, which existed in most geological eras. The fossils of brachiopods that can be seen in the Cambrian Museum are very similar to symmetrical bivalves, while brachiopods have large and small soles, but the two body parts of symmetrical bivalves are completely identical. Echinodermata fossils with a flower-like pattern, which is a special feature of their shells, along with plant fossils, form other pleasant sights of this museum. The life of the plant fossils on display in the museum is about 150 million years.