Description
- Solnhofen Insect
- Jurassic Age
- Solnhofen Limestone
- Near Hienheim, Germany
- This Insect displays nicely on it’s slab of limestone that measures approx. 4.75″ x 8″ in size. (Like all split limestone fossils, the parts that are missing when separated are highlighted with a tint)
Jurassic Solnhofen Insect. The Solnhofen Plattenkalk, or Solnhofen limestone, is a Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte. This Lagerstatte preserves a rare assemblage of fossilized organisms, including highly detailed imprints of soft bodied organisms such as sea jellies.
The most familiar fossils of the Solnhofen Plattenkalk include the early feathered theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx preserved in such detail that they are among the most famous and most beautiful fossils in the world.
The Solnhofen beds lie in the German state of Bavaria (Bayern), halfway between Nuremberg (Nürnberg) and Munich (München). The beds were originally quarried as a source of Lithographic limestone.
During the Late Jurassic, this area was an archipelago at the edge of the Tethys Sea.
This included placid lagoons that had limited access to the open sea and where salinity rose high enough that the resulting brine could not support life.
