Lagerstätte

Fossil fish from the Green River Formation, an Eocene Lagerstätte

Stranded scyphozoans with Climactichnites trackways from Blackberry Hill, Wisconsin (Cambrian). Scyphozoan in foreground is 10 cm in diameter. Slab is in hyporelief.

A Lagerstätte (German: [ˈlaːɡɐˌʃtɛtə], from Lager 'storage, lair' Stätte 'place'; plural Lagerstätten) is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying decomposition. Lagerstätten span geological time from the Neoproterozoic era to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, and the Cretaceous Santana and Yixian formations.

Types

Palaeontologists distinguish two kinds:

1. 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.
2. Konservat-Lagerstätten (conservation Lagerstätten) are deposits known for the exceptional preservation of fossilized organisms or traces. 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.

Preservation

Konservat-Lagerstätten preserve lightly sclerotized and soft-bodied organisms or traces of organisms that are not otherwise preserved in the usual shelly and bony fossil record; thus, they offer more complete records of ancient biodiversity and behavior and enable some reconstruction of the palaeoecology of ancient aquatic communities. In 1986, Simon Conway Morris calculated 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. Lagerstätten seem to be temporally autocorrelated, perhaps because global environmental factors such as climate might affect their deposition.

A number of taphonomic pathways may produce Lagerstätten. The following is an incomplete list:

• Orsten-type and Doushantuo-type preservations preserve organisms in phosphate.
• Bitter Springs-type preservation preserves them in silica.
• Carbonaceous films are the result of Burgess Shale-type preservation
• Pyrite preserves exquisite detail in Beecher’s trilobite-type preservation.
• Ediacaran-type preservation preserves casts and moulds with the aid of microbial mats.

Important Konservat-Lagerstätten

See also: List of fossil sites

The world's major Lagerstätten include:

Precambrian
Bitter Springs	1000–850 Mya	South Australia
Doushantuo Formation	600–555 Mya	Guizhou Province, China
Mistaken Point	565 Mya	Newfoundland, Canada
Ediacara Hills	550-545? Mya	South Australia
Cambrian
Maotianshan Shales (Chengjiang)	515 Mya	Yunnan Province, China
Sirius Passet	518 Mya	Greenland
Emu Bay Shale	513 Mya	South Australia
Kaili Formation	513–501 Mya	Guizhou province, south-west China
Blackberry Hill	~510–500 Mya	Central Wisconsin, US
Wheeler Shale (House Range)	507 Mya	Western Utah, US
Burgess Shale	508 Mya	British Columbia, Canada
Kinnekulle Orsten and Alum Shale	500 Mya	Sweden
Öland Orste and Alum Shale	500 Mya	Sweden
Ordovician
Fezouata Formation	about 485 Mya	Draa Valley, Morocco
Beecher's Trilobite Bed	460? Mya	New York, US
Walcott-Rust Quarry	about 455? Mya	New York, US
Soom shale	450? Mya	South Africa
Silurian
Wenlock Series	~425 Mya	England, UK
Devonian
Rhynie chert	400 Mya	Scotland, UK
Hunsrück Slates (Bundenbach)	390 Mya	Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Gogo Formation	380 Mya (Frasnian)	Western Australia
Miguasha National Park	370 Mya	Québec, Canada
Canowindra, New South Wales	360 Mya	Australia
Carboniferous
Bear Gulch Limestone	320 Mya	Montana, US
Joggins Fossil Cliffs	315 Mya	Nova Scotia, Canada
Mazon Creek	310 Mya	Illinois, US
Montceau-les-Mines	300 Mya	France
Hamilton Quarry	300 Mya	Kansas, US
Permian
Mangrullo Formation	about 285-275 Mya (Artinskian)	Uruguay
Triassic
Madygen Formation	230 Mya	Kyrgyzstan
Ghost Ranch	205 Mya	New Mexico, US
Jurassic
Holzmaden/Posidonia Shale	180 Mya	Württemberg, Germany
Mesa Chelonia	164.6 Mya	Shanshan County, China
La Voulte-sur-Rhône	160 Mya	Ardèche, France
Karabastau Formation	155.7 Mya	Kazakhstan
Solnhofen Limestone	145 Mya	Bavaria, Germany
Canjuers Limestone	145 Mya	France
Cretaceous
Las Hoyas	about 125 Mya (Barremian)	Cuenca, Spain
Yixian Formation	about 125-121 Mya	Liaoning, China
Xiagou Formation	about 120-115? Mya (mid-Apt.)	Gansu, China
Crato Formation	about 117 Mya (Aptian)	northeast Brazil
Haqel/Hadjula/al-Nammoura	about 95 Mya	Lebanon
Santana Formation	108-92 Mya	Brazil
Smoky Hill Chalk	87-82 Mya	Kansas and Nebraska, US
Ingersoll Shale	85 Mya	Alabama, US
Auca Mahuevo	80 Mya	Patagonia, Argentina
Zhucheng	66 Mya	Shandong, China
Eocene
Fur Formation	55-53 Mya	Fur, Denmark
London Clay	54-48 Mya	England, UK
McAbee Fossil Beds	52.9 ± 0.83 Mya	British Columbia, Canada
Green River Formation	50 Mya	Colorado/Utah/Wyoming, US
Klondike Mountain Formation	49.4 ± .5 Mya	Washington, US
Monte Bolca	49 Mya	Italy
Messel Oil Shale	49 Mya	Hessen, Germany
Quercy Phosphorites Formation	25–45 Mya	South-Western France
Oligocene–Miocene
Dominican amber	30-10 Mya	Dominican Republic
Riversleigh	25-15 Mya	Queensland, Australia
Miocene
Clarkia fossil beds	20-17 Mya	Idaho, US
Barstow Formation	19-13.4 Mya	California, US
Ashfall Fossil Beds	12–13? Mya	Nebraska, US
Pleistocene
Mammoth Site	26 Kya	South Dakota, US
Rancho La Brea Tar Pits	40-12 Kya	California, US
Waco Mammoth National Monument	65-51 Kya	Texas, US
El Breal de Orocual	2.5-1 Mya.	Monagas, Venezuela
El Mene de Inciarte	25.5-28 Kya	Zulia, Venezuela

See also

• List of fossil sites (with link directory)

Further reading

• Penney, D.(ed.) 2010. Biodiversity of Fossils in Amber from the Major World Deposits. Siri Scienfic Press, Manchester, 304 pp.
• – A catalogue of sites of exceptional fossil preservation produced by MSc palaeobiology students at University of Bristol's Department of Earth Sciences.