Lagerstätte
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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 the decomposition of both gross and fine biological features until long after a durable impression was created in the surrounding matrix. 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 Silurian Waukesha Biota, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Posidonia Shale and Solnhofen Limestone, the Cretaceous Yixian, Santana, and Agua Nueva formations, the Eocene Green River Formation, the Miocene Foulden Maar and Ashfall Fossil Beds, and the Pleistocene Naracoorte Caves and La Brea Tar Pits.
Types[edit]
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.
- 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[edit]
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.[2] 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.[3]
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[edit]
The world's major Lagerstätten include:
See also[edit]
- List of fossil sites (with link directory)
- Hoard, a concentration of human artifacts useful for similar reasons in archaeology
References[edit]
- ^ The term was originally coined by Adolf Seilacher in: Seilacher, A. (1970). "Begriff und Bedeutung der Fossil-Lagerstätten: Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie". Monatshefte (in German). 1970: 34–39.
- ^ Briggs et al. 1983; Aldridge et al. 1993.[full citation needed]
- ^ Retallack, G. J. (2011). "Exceptional fossil preservation during CO2 greenhouse crises?". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 307 (1–4): 59–74. Bibcode:2011PPP...307...59R. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.04.023.
- ^ "DIRECT EVIDENCE OF FOOD CHAINS AT THE LINTON LAGERSTATTE". gsa.confex.com.
- ^ Garwood, Russell J.; Sharma, Prashant P.; Dunlop, Jason A.; Giribet, Gonzalo (2014). "A Paleozoic Stem Group to Mite Harvestmen Revealed through Integration of Phylogenetics and Development". Current Biology. 24 (9): 1017–23. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2014.03.039. PMID 24726154.
- ^ Perrier, V.; Charbonnier, S. (2014). "The Montceau-les-Mines Lagerstätte (Late Carboniferous, France)". Comptes Rendus Palevol. 13 (5): 353–67. doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2014.03.002.
- ^ Luthardt, Ludwig; Rößler, Ronny; Schneider, Joerg W. (1 January 2016). "Palaeoclimatic and site-specific conditions in the early Permian fossil forest of Chemnitz—Sedimentological, geochemical and palaeobotanical evidence". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 441: 627–652. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2015.10.015. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ^ Piñeiro, G.; Ramos, A.; Goso, C. S.; Scarabino, F.; Laurin, M. (2012). "Unusual Environmental Conditions Preserve a Permian Mesosaur-Bearing Konservat-Lagerstätte from Uruguay". Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. 57 (2): 299–318. doi:10.4202/app.2010.0113.
- ^ Slater, Ben J.; McLoughlin, Stephen; Hilton, Jason (June 2015). "A high-latitude Gondwanan lagerstätte: The Permian permineralised peat biota of the Prince Charles Mountains, Antarctica". Gondwana Research. 27 (4): 1446–1473. doi:10.1016/j.gr.2014.01.004. Retrieved 8 June 2022.
- ^ Wings, Oliver; Rabi, Márton; Schneider, Jörg W.; Schwermann, Leonie; Sun, Ge; Zhou, Chang-Fu; Joyce, Walter G. (2012), "An enormous Jurassic turtle bone bed from the Turpan Basin of Xinjiang, China", Naturwissenschaften, 114 (11): 925–35, Bibcode:2012NW.....99..925W, doi:10.1007/s00114-012-0974-5, PMID 23086389, S2CID 17423081
- ^ DePalma, Robert; et al. (2 April 2019). "A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota". PNAS. 116 (17): 8190–8199. Bibcode:2019PNAS..116.8190D. doi:10.1073/pnas.1817407116. PMC 6486721. PMID 30936306.
- ^ Lalloy, F.; Rage, J. C.; Evans, S.E.; Boistel, R.; Lenoir, N.; Laurin, M. (2013). "A re-interpretation of the Eocene anuran Thaumastosaurus based on microCT examination of a 'mummified' specimen". PLOS ONE. 8 (9): 1–11. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...874874L. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0074874. PMC 3783478. PMID 24086389.
- ^ Riquelme, Francisco; Hernández-Patricio, Miguel; Martínez-Dávalos, Arnulfo; et al. (2014). "Two Flat-Backed Polydesmidan Millipedes from the Miocene Chiapas-Amber Lagerstätte, Mexico". PLOS ONE. 9 (8): e105877. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...9j5877R. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105877. PMC 4146559. PMID 25162220.
- ^ McCurry, Matthew; Cantrill, David; Smith, Patrick; et al. (2022). "A Lagerstätte from Australia provides insight into the nature of Miocene mesic ecosystems". Science Advances. 8 (1): eabm1406. Bibcode:2022SciA....8.1406M. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abm1406. PMC 8741189. PMID 34995110.
Further reading[edit]
- Penney, D. (ed.) 2010. Biodiversity of Fossils in Amber from the Major World Deposits. Siri Scienfic Press, Manchester, 304 pp.
- "Fossil Lagerstätten". Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol. 2003. Archived from the original on 12 June 2007. Retrieved 21 November 2005. – A catalogue of sites of exceptional fossil preservation produced by MSc palaeobiology students at University of Bristol's Department of Earth Sciences.
- Orr, Patrick J.; David J. Siveter (1 January 2000). "Three-dimensional preservation of a non-biomineralized arthropod in concretions in Silurian volcaniclastic rocks from Herefordshire, England". Journal of the Geological Society. 157 (1): 173–86. Bibcode:2000JGSoc.157..173O. doi:10.1144/jgs.157.1.173. S2CID 129635160. Retrieved 26 October 2006.
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