The Polish Woolly Rhino

     Paul Johnson's 2003 Art: A New History starts off with a chapter on cave paintings.  While describing how high up off the cave floor many of the big paintings were done, he says this:

    "The famous painting of a woolly rhinoceros at Font-de-Gaume, whose accuracy was first disputed but then confirmed when a well-preserved example of this supposedly mythic creature was unearthed in 1907 in a bitumen deposit in Poland, is found high up on a huge cave wall."

     Well! I could not let that rest.  Here are some photos from a 2004 writeup from Kraków entitled Wykopaliska w Staruni  ("Excavations in Starunia.")  (Starunia was a Polish village in 1907; now it is part of Ukraine.)

The proud professors at the coal mine.  Check these guys out!  Imagine their celebrations at the end of the excavatory workday.  Na zdrowie!

                                           

Coleodonta antiquitatus

                                  

Reconstruction done at that time.

                                           

     At the top left of the web article page is a little button for the home page: Zwoje, "The Scrolls, an Internet Cultural Periodical."

     From there I clicked on "The Vanishing Kraków," just for kicks.  And here is an image from that photoessay:

     So - now when we go to Kraków and walk around Grodzka Street and see this, we will understand what we are seeing:  architectural adornment that celebrates an important paleontologic find in Poland in 1907.

     Miłość dla wszystkich - Julie