Lagerstätten

Prepared By:SABINO, Anna Nerissa C.

SAN JOSE, Czarina Maye P.

Lagerstätte(plural Lagerstätten)

German word: Lager and Stätte literally meaning "place

of storage” rock strata within the geological record

which contain a much more completely preserved record, can be considered as windows on the history of life on Earth

Konzentrat-Lagerstätten

Concentration Lagerstätten

deposits with a peculiar abundance of broken-up hard parts, such as a bone bed

Categories of Konzentrat-Lagerstätten

Condensation deposits

Fossil Bone Bed; concentrated deposits of fish teeth, scales and bones. Silurian Period, about 420

million years old.

Placer deposits Concentration traps

Konservat-Lagerstätten

Conservation Lagerstätten

extraordinary preservation of fossilized life forms, especially where the soft parts are preserved

Categories of Konservat-Lagerstätten

Stagnation deposits

Jurassic Holzmaden Shale of southern Germany, a pregnant

ichthyosaur

Obrution deposits

A typical flattened Burgess Shale fossil, Opabinia

Conservation Traps

A very young mammoth snap frozen and revealed in melting permafrost, with much of its hair intact, though missing its trunk, display in the St

Petersburg Zoological Museum

Soft Tissue Preservation

Typically bacteria mediated o The microbes responsible

for the quick decay of tissues release ions as they metabolize the organic matter.

o These ions are then available to precipitate in and around the nearby tissues, fossilizing them.

oMicrobes play a role in both destroying the soft tissue and mineralizing it.

Soft Tissue Preservation

Begins very quickly Preservation in :

o Pyrite As the bacteria

metabolize the organic matter, they reduce the sulfur and the iron, eventually forming pyrite.

This 7.5 inch by 6.0 inch slab from the Lower Devonian (390 million year old)

Hunsruck slate of the Rhine region near Bundenbach, Germany holds an example

of a starfish known as Furcaster palaeozoicus. The starfish itself is

highlighted in pyrite, indicative of the anoxic conditions under which it was

preserved.

o Carbonate these may have been formed when decay

increased the HCO3- ion concentration trapped below a layer of sediment.

If the sediment were suddenly washed away, carbon dioxide would quickly escape.

As a result, the water would suddenly become less acidic causing calcium or magnesium carbonates in solution to quickly precipitate and infiltrate the buried plant material

o Phosphate The microbes’ metabolic activity increases the phosphate ion concentration and decreases the pH in the immediate vicinity.

Soft Tissue Preservation

Burgess Shale

Burgess Shale

Discovered by Charles D. Walcott in 1909

 found in an area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains known as the Burgess Pass

represents one of the most diverse and well-preserved fossil localities in the world from Cambrian Explosion

Burgess Shale

Anomalocaris Canadensis

The largest predator of the Cambrian,

Burgess Shale

Burgessochaeta setigeraA burrowing bristleworm with a pair of long tentacles

Burgess Shale

Marrella splendensAn abundant arthropod with large head spines

The Solnhofen Limestone of Germany

The Solnhofen Limestone of Germany

carbonate muds form a type of fine-grained, flat-cleaving limestone (known as Plattenkalk in German)

fossils from the Solnhofen Limestone show exquisite detail and often include fragile or soft-bodied organisms

The Solnhofen Limestone of Germany

 Archaeopteryx lithographicaThe earliest known bird

The Solnhofen Limestone of Germany

 Protolindenia (dragonfly)

The Solnhofen Limestone of Germany

Beetle