When and how were the Aegean Sea and its islands created? Are there active volcanoes in Greece? Has our country always had its Mediterranean climate? What kind of animals and plants have lived in our area in the past? How are the Cyclops connected to the geological history of the Aegean?

You can find the answers to these and many more questions at the temporary exhibition “Aegean-Creation of An Archipelago”.

Through impressive fossils and rocks of the Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest, the Museum of Geology and Paleontology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Natural History Museum of the University of Crete, rich photographic material, audiovisual representations, projections and interactive applications, the geological processes that shaped the Aegean for the last 250 million years, as well as its ecosystems, are being presented.

The exhibition consists of three sections. The first, “GAIA MEMORIES: from Tethys to Aegean”, presents the entire geological history of the region, from the original ocean of Tethys to the shaping of the contemporary Greek archipelago. The section “To the islands of Hephaestus and Poseidon” illustrates the geodynamic processes in the Aegean, the volcanic and seismic activity that formed the Archipelago. The third section, “GAIA: from myth to science”, presents the impressive evolution of the biodiversity of the Aegean basin over the course of 150 million years.

The exhibition invites us to get to know the Archipelago of ​​nature and culture, myths and history, to understand the constant interaction of geology and culture, while at the same time it stimulates our senses with images from the islands of the Aegean Sea.