Lagerstätte

Yeah.

So that was a cool talk and it's again, it's easy to forget the importance of the geology side of things when looking at Lagerstätten and these sites of accessible preservation.

It's always nice to see that being brought in, especially to study something that's been looked at for decades.

hundred and

We're talking about soft tissues, delicate internal organs, or entire vibrant ecosystems captured in mind-blowing detail.

What creates a Lagerstätte? If normal fossilization requires a three-part lottery win, what does this require?

It requires a perfect storm of environmental extremes.

You need instantaneous burial, often coupled with an environment that has almost zero oxygen, anoxic conditions.

That's stunning.

It's incredible.

Another spectacular Lagerstätte is located in the Liaoning Province in China.

The fossil beds there were formed by repeated volcanic eruptions.

The first of all is that the bat fossil record is extremely broken up.

Um, you have these amazing, they're called Lagerstätten fossils, perfectly preserved fossils at around fifty-five to fifty million years ago.

Then you've got nothing until about a million years.

So we're missing loads and loads of this fossil history.

was? I want to be in Solnhofen.

Oh, that's a Lagerstatt?

150 million years ago.

Yeah.