An interesting find from Avalus.
I found this little piece of (oil) shale next to roadway currently under maintenance/construction. It is the imprint of a fern and something else. The stone might have come from the near Saar-region, where coal was dug up from the ground. The ‘waste-rocks’ are used as road-gravel.
‘We are walking on history’ gets a deeper meaning here, I guess.
(I need to take a picture of the fossil fern next to a living fern in spring :) )
schieferfossil, ©Avalus, all rights reserved
Actually some of our “mountains” here are those deposits. If you ever want to go fossil hunting, that’s where to go. We have quite a collection of fossils like yours.
My grandpa used to have a real nice big one (about a sheet of paper) that he actually found while digging coal.
Wow! What a delightful find.
I’m so envious! It’s beautiful, the best I’ve ever done is corals. My dream is to discover a dinosaur… heh, but I definitely live in the wrong country for that.
My parents once took me to the famous town of Bundenbach as a teen*. I found among other stuff a partial trilobite there.
*I can not get a link to work right now. Wiki “Hunsrück slate”, in BB there is the historical mine “Grube Herrenberg” where you can buy stoneblocks an take them apart for fossils.
rq: Should you ever find yourself in this part of germany, you know what to do!
That’s a great find, Avalus, I’m envious too!
rq
Heh, at least you have a good excuse. I live in the right country for that, but I never found one either…
Thank you :)
Should you ever find yourself in germany, there are some places to officially hunt fossils here. As a teen I was in Herrenberg Grube near Bundenbach in the Hunsrück mountains with my parents. There are world famous fossils dug out (google ‘hunsrück slate’) and you can try your luck with supervision and help.
A lovely little fern.
There are next to no fossils here, as most of the rocks here are igneous or metamorphic and from the Precambrian.