Solnhofen Limestone
Solnhofen, Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen District, Middle Franconia, Bavaria, Germany
It is not easy to write a short piece about the Solnhofen Limestone – it is arguably the worlds most famous fossil site, a Konservat-Lagerstätten known for phenomenal preservation of fossils, even of soft bodied creatures and of soft tissues.
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Manganese Dendrite specimens from Solnhofen, Germany
£12.50 -
Saccocoma crinoid fossils
Price range: £12.50 through £20.00
The Solnhofen Limestone is a Konservat-Lagerstätten, and named by the IUGS as one of its most important geological heritage sites worldwide.
The site produces finely preserved fossils of various creatures, enough, in fact, that I’d need to write a book about it to cover the subject in any remote detail.
Amongst the more well recognised species found here are Archaeopteryx, a feathered dinosaur. There are also fossil records of pterodactyls, pterosaurs, lizards, feathers, insects, sharks, and more – over 600 species are known from the site.
For mineral collectors, dendritic limestones are found around the area, unusual branching growths of crystalline manganese which form ‘tree like’ growths across a flat plane of rock. These are sometimes known as ‘pseudofossils’, as to the untrained eye they definitely appear to be organic in origin.
Further reading
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnhofen_Limestone
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleobiota_of_the_Solnhofen_Limestone
- https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solnhofen_Limestone (simple Wikipedia, a more accessible page for beginners)
For the rest of our German stock, see below.
Germany
Fossils from Germany - Minerals from Germany