STOCKHOLM: Two hundred million years ago, the land that became southern Sweden was covered in lush vegetation where crocodiles and dinosaurs roamed, an era palaeontologist Vivi Vajda and her team have set out to reconstruct.

In a wing of the Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, the researcher recently welcomed AFP to her office, scattered with books and fossil samples. Sitting behind her microscope, Vajda examined specimens collected in Sweden’s southern Skane province, projecting them onto the wall with an overhead projector. “This is a pollen sample that I collected in the field,” she said, pointing to what looks like brown and yellow spots, round and rectangular in shape. Most of the Jurassic-era fossils found in Sweden have been discovered in Skane, preserved thanks to deep cracks in the ground that protected them from the ice ages that erased traces in Sweden.

“I’m interested in what forests there were during the Jurassic period, so when I see a pollen grain, I actually see the tree. I can see the tree and the ecosystem in front of me,” she said. The idea of showing the general public what appeared in her mind whenever she saw a rock or a fossil gradually took shape over the course of her fieldwork.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2026