ammonites
Grube Messel Pit (Senckenberg Collection) (Eocene of Germany)

Where: Hessen, Germany (49.9° N, 8.8° E: paleocoordinates 46.9° N, 4.8° E)

• coordinate based on nearby landmark

• small collection-level geographic resolution

When: Messel Formation, MP 11 (48.6 - 40.4 Ma)

• "lower Middle Eocene, lower-most Geiseltalian, Mammal Paleogene level 11… .575 to .77 m above local stratigraphic marker Alpha."

• bed-level stratigraphic resolution

Environment/lithology: crater lake; lithified claystone

• "A drilling project conducted in 2001 showed that the former Lake Messel was a maar lake, which is a small deep lake that had its origin in an explosive volcanic eruption. The former lake basin had an original diameter of about 1.5 km, and a depth of about 300–400 m (Harms, 2002; Felder & Harms, 2004)."
• "The fossils are embedded in darkly coloured, finely laminated claystone sediments rich in organic substances (‘oil shale’), which were deposited in a meromictic lake (e.g. Goth, 1990)."

Size classes: macrofossils, mesofossils

Preservation: adpression, soft parts

Collection methods: quarrying,

Primary reference: R. K. Kinzelbach and H. Pohl. 1994. The Fossil Strepsiptera (Insecta: Strepsiptera). Annals of the Entomological Society of America 87(1):59-70 [M. Clapham/J. Karr] more details

Purpose of describing collection: taxonomic analysis

PaleoDB collection 120798: authorized by Matthew Clapham, entered by Jered Karr on 21.11.2011, edited by Matthew Clapham and Jenna Sandlin

Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (attribution-noncommercial-no derivatives)