Everything about Lagerst Tten totally explained
Lagerstätten (
German; singular
Lagerstätte; literally
place of storage,
resting place) are
sedimentary deposits that exhibit extraordinary
fossil richness or completeness.
Palaeontologists distinguish two kinds.
Konzentrat-Lagerstätten (
concentration Lagerstätten) are deposits with a particular
concentration of disarticulated organic hard parts, such as a bone bed. These Lagerstätten are less spectacular than the more famous
Konservat-Lagerstätten. Their contents invariably display a large degree of time averaging, as the accumulation of bones in the absence of other sediment takes some time. Deposits with a high concentration of fossils that represent an in-situ community, such as
reefs or
oyster beds, are not considered Lagerstätten.
Konservat-Lagerstätten (
conservation Lagerstätten) are deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organisms, where the soft parts are preserved in the form of impressions or casts. This is caused by incompleteness of biological recycling, for example where anoxic conditions, as in oxygen-free mud, has suppressed common
bacterial decomposition long enough for the initial casts of soft body parts to register. The individual
taphonomy of the fossils varies with the sites. Conservation Lagerstätten are crucial in providing answers to important moments in the history and
evolution of life, for example the
Burgess Shale of British Columbia is associated with the
Cambrian explosion, and the
Solnhofen limestone with the earliest known
bird,
Archaeopteryx.
Lagerstätten preserve lightly sclerotized and soft-bodied organisms that are not otherwise preserved in the usual shelly and bony fossil record; thus they offer a more complete record of ancient biodiversity and enable some reconstruction of the
paleoecology of ancient aquatic communities. In 1986
Simon Conway Morris calculated that only about 14% of genera in the Burgess Shale had possessed
biomineralized tissues in life. The affinities of the shelly elements of
conodonts were mysterious until the associated soft tissues were discovered near Edinburgh, Scotland, in the Granton Lower
Oil Shale of the
Carboniferous. Information from the broader range of organisms found in Lagerstätten have contributed to recent phylogenetic reconstructions of some major metazoan groups.
Lagerstätte still have preservational biases, for example, certain fossils not showing up in the bed due to environmental conditions.
Important Lagerstätten
The world's major Lagerstätten include:
| Pre-Cambrian |
|
|
| Ediacara Hills |
700 mya |
South Australia |
| Doushantuo Formation |
600–555 mya |
Guizhou Province, China |
| Cambrian |
|
|
| Maotianshan shales (Chengjiang) |
525 mya |
Yunnan Province, China |
| Emu Bay shale |
525 mya |
South Australia |
| Sirius Passet |
518 mya |
Greenland |
| Kaili Formation |
513-501 mya |
Guizhou province, southwest China |
| House Range |
Middle Cambrian |
Western Utah, USA |
| Burgess Shale |
505 mya |
British Columbia, Canada |
| Kinnekulle Orsten and Alum Shale |
500 mya |
Sweden |
| Öland Orsten and Alum Shale |
500 mya |
Sweden |
| Ordovician |
|
|
| Soom Shale |
435 mya |
South Africa |
| Silurian |
|
|
| Wenlock Series |
420 mya |
England |
| Devonian |
|
|
| Rhynie chert |
400 mya |
Scotland |
| Hunsrück Slates |
390 mya |
Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany |
| Canowindra, New South Wales |
360mya |
Australia |
| Carboniferous |
|
|
| Bear Gulch Limestone |
320 mya |
Montana, USA |
| Mazon Creek |
300 mya |
Illinois, USA |
| Hamilton Quarry |
295 mya |
Kansas, USA |
| Triassic |
|
|
| Karatau |
213–144 mya |
Kazakhstan |
| Ghost Ranch |
185–155 mya |
New Mexico, USA |
| Jurassic |
|
|
| Holzmaden |
160 mya |
Württemberg, Germany |
| La Voulte-sur-Rhone |
160 mya |
Ardèche, France |
| Solnhofen limestone |
145 mya |
Bavaria, Germany |
| Cretaceous |
|
|
| Yixian Formation |
ca 135 mya |
Liaoning, China |
| Crato Formation |
ca 117 mya (Aptian) |
northeast Brazil |
| Xiagou Formation |
ca 110 mya |
Gansu, China |
| Santana Formation |
108–92 mya |
Brazil |
| Auca Mahuevo |
80 mya |
Patagonia, Argentina |
| Eocene |
|
|
| Green River Formation |
50 mya |
Colorado/Utah/Wyoming, USA |
| Monte Bolca |
49 mya |
Italy |
| Messel Oil Shale |
49 mya |
Hessen, Germany |
| London Clay |
54–48 mya |
UK |
| Oligocene–Miocene |
|
|
| Dominican amber |
30–10 mya |
Dominican Republic |
| Riversleigh |
25–15 mya |
Queensland, Australia |
| Miocene |
|
|
| Clarkia fossil beds |
20–17 mya |
Idaho, USA |
| Ashfall Fossil Beds |
10 mya |
Nebraska, USA |
| Pleistocene |
|
|
| Rancho La Brea Tar Pits |
20,000 yrs bp |
California, USA |
Further Information
Get more info on 'Lagerst Tten'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://lagerst__tte.totallyexplained.com">Lagerstätte Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
