Everyone hard at work counting ammonites, you can see the enthusiasm in the picture. |
The morning was spent at the Werkforum Museum at the cement works in Dotternhausen. Here we got a brief background to the fossils found in the quarry and what the environment would have been like 185 Ma.
So while visiting the Dotternhausen Quarry it was to be expected that as a cohort of 20 students we should find something between us.
Dactylioceras in one of many sheets of split shale. |
Phylloceras from yet another sheet of shale. |
Our first task was to collect and tabulate the number of ammonites with epibionts living on them. Myself and three of my close colleagues set to work splitting shale "sheets" and counting every ammonite in sight. Here I had my first find, a beautifully preserved fish fin, encircled by the disarticulated 'horseshore' structure of a Lytoceras ammonite.
The well preserved fish fin with the Lytoceras horseshoe in the top of the picture. |
The small tail vertebra from the ammonite exercise. |
The small Ichthyosaur vertebra, in need of a little treatment to protect it. |
An hour or two after we arrived to the quarry we had all just about finished the exercise, and not a moment too soon with the day only getting hotter and hotter! And so, true to form with this class, we enthusiastically scrabbled over freshly blasted rock from the quarry wall in search of the fossils we had seen in the museum that morning.
I chose to split larger blocks bit by bit in the hope that there would be a bone or two preserved inside. A few blocks in, I start on one particular piece and put it on its side and begin hammering. It split a little too easy and at an odd angle, revealing a line of bones in the piece that had come away. Turning it over, I found that there was a line of vertebrae, criss-crossed by slender ribs. This was a disarticulated Ichthyosaur. Just on this block there was around 15 vertebrae. Definitely not complete but certainly exciting to find! It took three of us to move this block out so that the rest of the class could see what had been found.
The first block to be found in the quarry, with some of the offcuts to the right. |
The two main blocks and offcuts that we managed to find and bring back to the UK for preparation. |
Meanwhile, the search continued for the rest of the animal. After shifting some rock, another block with a single vertebra and some definition of ribs was found. Still not complete but unfortunately there was no more of the Ichthyosaur to find. At first, I thought that the museum, or at least the cement works, would want this find for themselves. Some quarry owners in the UK confiscate fossils and sell them as profit, I assumed this was the same here. But, I was told that I would be allowed to keep them and bring them back to the UK to prepare the bones myself.
Side view of one offcut that thankfully fits back onto the rounded block quite nicely |
There's always one piece left over, no idea how this fits onto either block. But it'll still make a nice addition to my collection. |
The local museum has very kindly allowed me to use their equipment to prepare this find. Work will begin on the 27th June. I plan to upload nightly on the progress of the day even if it is just a photograph of what has been revealed so far. Needless to say, I'm very excited!
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