Lagerstätte

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Fossil fish from the Green River Formation, an Eocene Lagerstätte

A Lagerstätte (German: [ˈlaːɡɐʃtɛtə], from Lager 'storage' Stätte 'place'; plural Lagerstätten) is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossil richness or completeness.

Palaeontologists distinguish two kinds.^[1]

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, 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.

Preservation

Konservat-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 palaeoecology 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.^[2] Information from the broader range of organisms found in Lagerstätten have contributed to recent phylogenetic reconstructions of some major metazoan groups. Lagerstatten seem to be temporally autocorrelated, perhaps because global environmental factors – perhaps climate? – affect their deposition.^[3]

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

• Orsten type preservation and Doushantuo type preservation 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 Lagerstätten

The world's major Lagerstätten include:

Pre-Cambrian
Bitter Springs	1000–850 Ma	South Australia
Ediacara Hills	630-542 Ma	South Australia
Doushantuo Formation	600–555 Ma	Guizhou Province, China
Mistaken Point	565 Ma	Newfoundland, Canada
Cambrian
Maotianshan Shales (Chengjiang)	525 Ma	Yunnan Province, China
Sirius Passet	518 Ma	Greenland
Emu Bay shale	517 Ma	South Australia
Kaili Formation	513–501 Ma	Guizhou province, south-west China
Wheeler Shale (House Range)	507 Ma	Western Utah, US
Burgess Shale	505 Ma	British Columbia, Canada
Kinnekulle Orsten and Alum Shale	500 Ma	Sweden
Öland Orste and Alum Shale	500 Ma	Sweden
Ordovician
Fezouata formation	c.485 Ma	Draa Valley, Morocco
Walcott-Rust quarry	c.450 Ma	New York, US
Beecher's Trilobite Bed	445 Ma	New York, US
Soom Shale	435 Ma	South Africa
Silurian
Wenlock Series	420 Ma	England
Devonian
Rhynie chert	400 Ma	Scotland
Hunsrück Slates	390 Ma	Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Miguasha National Park	370 Ma	Québec, Canada
Canowindra, New South Wales	360 Ma	Australia
Gogo Formation	350 Ma	Western Australia
Carboniferous
Bear Gulch Limestone	320 Ma	Montana, US
Joggins Fossil Cliffs	315 Ma	Nova Scotia, Canada
Mazon Creek	300 Ma	Illinois, US
Montceau-les-Mines	300 Ma	France
Hamilton Quarry	295 Ma	Kansas, US
Triassic
Madygen Formation	230 Ma	Kyrgyzstan
Ghost Ranch	205 Ma	New Mexico, US
Jurassic
Holzmaden/Posidonia Shale	180 Ma	Württemberg, Germany
Karabastau Formation	155.7 Ma	France
La Voulte-sur-Rhône	160 Ma	Ardèche, France
Solnhofen limestone	145 Ma	Bavaria, Germany
Canjuers limestone	145 Ma	France
Cretaceous
Yixian Formation	ca 125-121 Ma	Liaoning, China
Las Hoyas	ca 125 Ma (Barremian)	Cuenca, Spain
Crato Formation	ca 117 Ma (Aptian)	northeast Brazil
Xiagou Formation	ca 110 Ma	Gansu, China
Haqel/Hadjula/al-Nammoura lagerstätten	ca 95 Ma	Lebanon
Santana Formation	108–92 Ma	Brazil
Smoky Hill Chalk	87–82 Ma	Kansas and Nebraska, US
Ingersoll Shale	85 Ma	Alabama, US
Auca Mahuevo	80 Ma	Patagonia, Argentina
Zhucheng	65 Ma	Shandong, China
Eocene
Fur Formation	55–53 Ma	Fur, Denmark
London Clay	54–48 Ma	UK
Green River Formation	50 Ma	Colorado/Utah/Wyoming, US
Monte Bolca	49 Ma	Italy
Messel Oil Shale	49 Ma	Hessen, Germany
Oligocene–Miocene
Dominican amber	30–10 Ma	Dominican Republic
Riversleigh	25–15 Ma	Queensland, Australia
Miocene
Clarkia fossil beds	20–17 Ma	Idaho, US
Barstow Formation	13.4 Ma	California, US
Ashfall Fossil Beds	10 Ma	Nebraska, US
Pleistocene
The Mammoth Site	26 ka	South Dakota, US
Rancho La Brea Tar Pits	40 ka - 12 ka	California, US

See also

• List of fossil sites (with link directory)

References

1. ^ The term was originally coined by Adolf Seilacher here:Seilacher, A. (1970). "Begriff und Bedeutung der Fossil-Lagerstätten: Neues Jahrbuch fur Geologie und Paläontologie" (in German). Monatshefte 1970: 34–39. 
2. ^ Briggs et al. 1983; Aldridge et al. 1993.
3. ^ Retallack, G. J. (2011). "Exceptional fossil preservation during CO₂ greenhouse crises?". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2011.04.023.  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. http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Lagerstatten/. Retrieved 2005-11-21.  — 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.; Derek E. G. Briggs, David J. Siveter and Derek 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): 173–186. doi:10.1144/jgs.157.1.173. http://jgs.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/1/173. Retrieved 2006-10-26.