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Inland Sites
For more stories about digs at Koonwarra see our Field Reports and (after 2008) our blog.
Koonwarra
“In terms of numbers of new species, excellence of preservation, and impact on palaeoecological knowledge, [Koonwarra] is one of the great fossil localities of the Mesozoic Era.” – Mary Dettmann and Jack Douglas, Geology of Victoria (Second Edition; 1988).
Most people with an interest in palaeontology will eventually come across the term Lagerstätte. Although it sounds like a brand of Bavarian beer, you will not find Lagerstätte on tap at Oktoberfest. However, both the beer type called “lager” and the palaeontological term derive from the same word: lager, which means “storeroom” in German. Combined with stätte, which means “place”, the translation of Lagerstätte is simply “storeroom place”. In truth, it does not sound very exciting once you break it down. However, if you found a Lagerstätte and told a palaeontologist of your discovery, they would practically beg you to take them to it.
So what is a Lagerstätte? Put simply, it is an exceptional fossil site. The term was proposed by German palaeontologist Dolf Seilacher in 1970 to categorise fossil sites of outstanding significance. According to his criteria, in order to earn the Lagerstätte designation, a site had to either preserve fossils in exceptional abundance (in which case it would be a Konzentrat-Lagerstätte – a “concentration storeroom”) or produce fossils of exceptional quality (thereby making it a Konservat-Lagerstätte – a “conservation storeroom”).
Many sites around the world produce fossils in sufficiently high numbers to be considered Konzentrat-Lagerstätten, but relatively few fossil sites can be truly termed Konservat-Lagerstätten. Even so, there are a few in Australia!
One of these is the now-famous Koonwarra Fossil Bed in South Gippsland, Victoria.
Most people with an interest in palaeontology will eventually come across the term Lagerstätte. Although it sounds like a brand of Bavarian beer, you will not find Lagerstätte on tap at Oktoberfest. However, both the beer type called “lager” and the palaeontological term derive from the same word: lager, which means “storeroom” in German. Combined with stätte, which means “place”, the translation of Lagerstätte is simply “storeroom place”. In truth, it does not sound very exciting once you break it down. However, if you found a Lagerstätte and told a palaeontologist of your discovery, they would practically beg you to take them to it.
So what is a Lagerstätte? Put simply, it is an exceptional fossil site. The term was proposed by German palaeontologist Dolf Seilacher in 1970 to categorise fossil sites of outstanding significance. According to his criteria, in order to earn the Lagerstätte designation, a site had to either preserve fossils in exceptional abundance (in which case it would be a Konzentrat-Lagerstätte – a “concentration storeroom”) or produce fossils of exceptional quality (thereby making it a Konservat-Lagerstätte – a “conservation storeroom”).
Many sites around the world produce fossils in sufficiently high numbers to be considered Konzentrat-Lagerstätten, but relatively few fossil sites can be truly termed Konservat-Lagerstätten. Even so, there are a few in Australia!
One of these is the now-famous Koonwarra Fossil Bed in South Gippsland, Victoria.
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