Monday, June 15, 2015

In the house of Seilacher

Today we visited the fossil collections and Museum at the University of Tübingen... Dolf Seilacher's old stomping grounds!

The university also has a fabulous collection of Posidonia Shale fossils. The Posidonia Shale is an Early Jurassic (Toarcian, ~183Ma) fossil Lagerstätte. There are some exceptional fossils in this unit, including..... some amazing Coleoids (octopods and squids)! Here is a drawer full of octopod guards (Check out this link for a great squid dissection with photos of the guard).

Some of them have ink sacks too!

And there are some tiny little lobsters!

But mostly we just looked at lots of octopods!

The museum itself has a fabulous range of specimens! At one point in time, all the fossils collected in the region were reposited in Tübingen, and they have a wonderful collection thanks to this man... Dr. Quenstedt.


Pleisiosaurs!

Crocodiles (my student was very excited!)


Sharks!

Ichthyosaurs!



Lots of them.... some with skin impressions!



Ammonites of course.

 

Pieces of wood with bivalves growing on them (I think Dolf did the chalk outlines!)


 And the amazing crinoids (sea lilies) that lived attached to floating bits of wood!


This one blows my mind... it is HUGE!!!


And some normal fish too....

NEXT STOP: DOTTERHAUSEN!

No comments:

Post a Comment