Impact of policy, colonialism and conflicts on science development (as exemplified by Ukrainian palaeontology)

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Abstract
Science is influenced by its political and social context, and palaeontology is no exception. Social forces such as colonialism and the resource imbalance favouring the Global North have produced systematic biases in how we reconstruct the Earth’s past. In this study, we examine how colonial legacies and historical conflicts have influenced the development of palaeontology in Ukraine from 1721 to 2025. Our analysis of 1,968 publications on vertebrate palaeontology reveals a profound and long-lasting impact of Russian imperialism. This influence differs from “parachute science” commonly documented in many Global South countries. Instead of simply extracting fossils for metropolitan collections, Russian imperial policy reshaped Ukrainian palaeontology itself conceptually, taxonomically, and geographically. This occurred through the suppression of Ukrainian scientists, restrictions on the use of the Ukrainian language, and the disproportionate involvement of metropolitan researchers in studying Ukraine’s most scientifically valuable fossil material. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has disrupted these entrenched colonial structures and catalysed a rapid internationalization of Ukrainian vertebrate palaeontology.