Archaeologists found a fossil site with a high density in the east of Tehran.
According to Ilna, archaeologist Qasem Rahimi announced the discovery of a fossil site in the east of Tehran and said: “We had identified this area in our surveys of ancient sites, and we went to this area as planned to conduct more research.”
Pointing to the fact that this fossil site was identified during field visits to the east of Tehran and confirmed during further investigations, he said: “This was done in cooperation with behzad Hosseini Sarbisheh, an archeologist. In the past years, other archeologist colleagues had succeeded in finding fossil sites in the neighboring cities of Tehran, such as Damavand, Firoozkuh and Pardis, and now we were able to find fossils in this area, which is close to Tehran. We are now doing research on these findings.”
Referring to the current work being done for preparing and collecting documents of the areas around the fossil sites in the east of Tehran, Rahimi adde: This area is a vast area of nearly 500 meters and has a perfect geological layer, where the abundance of fossils of marine organisms (shellfish and ammonites) is found. Distribution of fossils in this area is very high, so it can be said that there are hundreds of fossils in one centimeter.
In response to whether the necessary tests have been done on these fossils, this archaeologist said: We are now in the test phase; that’s why we say that we will inform you of the other news after the tests are done.
Kourosh Roostayee, head of the archeological research institute, confirmed to ILNA that he was unaware of the discovery of this fossil site and said: “Considering that research on multi-million years old animal or plant fossils are not included in the activities of the Ministry of Heritage and archeological research institute, therefore I am not in on this discovery. This is actually part of the activities of the geology and environmental organizations.”
He continued: For example, a few years ago, during construction activities on Lorestan-Al Shattar road we encountered a rich collection of bones. After the visit, we realized that we were dealing with animal bones, and we saw signs of the presence of a dagger-toothed tiger with remains. We only start work on these sites when it is related to human remains or humans were involved in them. But if the fossil is something else the geology organization will be responsible.
