A Georgia Girl in Germany

I had off work on Friday, so was able to take advantage of the free time and escort MacKenzie’s class to a relatively local Jurassic-era fossil site in Holzmaden. We didn’t visit the museum, but instead went directly to one of the dig sites where five classes of 3rd graders were let loose with chisels in search of prehistoric fossils. It was a virtual gold mine of fossils, and everyone came home with quite a take!

With the exception of a few islands, present-day Europe was submerged under an inland tropical sea during the Jurassic period, 180 million years ago. The sea was inhabited by various saurians whose skeletons are preserved in the shale as a reminder of the prehistoric world. Nowhere in the world are they found in such great numbers and so well-preserved as here. The Holzmaden quarry was part of a large bay occupying roughly the area taken up by today's southern Germany. Holzmaden is still an active shale quarry, with the sites unearthed up to 12 meters deep. The slate is primarily used for floor slabs and tabletops, with the fossils unearthed by chance.


The most commonly-found fossils are of ammonites, which are only a few millimeters thick. The largest one MacKenzie found was just over two inches across. One kid found a huge ammonite fossil (about a foot across), and another found some kind of fossilized tooth. Apparently, some ammonite fossils can measure up to 1.5-meters in diameter. Like mussels and snails, ammonites are mollusks. The ammonites' shells were coiled and divided into chambers. These chambers could be filled with gas, and the animal could then rise to the surface. If the chambers were flooded, then it sank like a submarine. Only the furthermost chamber was a living chamber, and it was here where the soft body was found.

In addition to the plethora of ammonites that MacKenzie found, she also found two sections of Mesozoic fish. I’m not sure what kind of fish they were, but one was four inches across and four inches tall -- her largest find. That fish must have been several feet long by the size of the scales! She also found several deposits of pyrite. Many of the kids were excited when they first found their pyrite, until they realized it was fool’s gold. They still enjoyed finding it though.


MacKenzie left the dig site with her backpack so loaded-down that she couldn’t carry it! Good thing I went with her so I could lug it back up the hill out of the quarry to the bus! Some of her finds contained dozens of ammonite fossils, sometimes in several different layers. It was really quite amazing!



After we returned to school, MacKenzie and I headed home for quick showers and to pick up Benjamin before hitting the road for Wiesbaden (Zachary was on his way to Gundershoffen, France, for an international campout). We were trying to catch at least the last half of Toby Keith’s “Big Dog Daddy Concert.” Unfortunately, we ran into three staus and a hailstorm, so arrived just in time to see throngs of people leaving the concert for their cars. There must not have been an opening number, because everyone was leaving less than an hour and a half after it started. We were all disappointed -- MacKenzie was in tears, and Benjamin was also upset...especially since we’d been listening to Toby Keith’s CD’s on the way up (each time the song “I Wanna Talk About Me” came on, Benjamin proclaimed it was his song, much to MacKenzie’s dismay). To add insult to injury, we were stuck in 45 minutes of traffic trying to leave post.

Rather than simply turning around and heading back home, we detoured to Ramstein to eat supper at Chili’s. The kids had traditional American fare of macaroni and cheese and corn dogs, so it wasn’t a total wash of an afternoon, but it did make for a rather late-evening return.

Labels: Germany, MacKenzie, Travel