This year I have been on fewer fossil trips than at any time in my 30 years of collecting. This is mostly because my work is now taking me around the world as far east as Kuwait and as far west as China. This June I was working once more in Brussels, Belgium. With a free day on my hands and having seen much of Brussels on previous trips, I decided to visit a fossil friend and one time trading partner, two hours away in the Netherlands (Holland) in the city of Utrecht. I first started correspondence and trading with Piet Hessel in the late 90s after discovering his website Stichting Schepsel Schelp (http://www.fossilshells.nl) which roughly translates into the International Fossil Shell Foundation. According to his website, Piet first started collecting recent shells along the eastern Atlantic but after he started collecting fossil shells in 1968, the bug obviously bit because of the incredible amount of specimens that he has collected around the world. He turned his townhouse into a museum bought and expanded into the townhouse next door and had basements dug for both because of his ever increasing collection. The museum is now recognized by the Dutch Department of Treasury as non-profit organization.

I always enjoy the Netherlands. I have been fortunate that each time I am there the weather is nice-ish and the vegetation green, lush and blooming. With a GPS I was able to navigatie the narrow streets and the homicidal cyclists of Utrecht as described by the virtual tourist website to the residence of Piet and Jeannette Hessel. Signs in the first floor windows indicated that I had arrived. After a cup a coffee and some small talk, Piet and Jeannette proceeded to show me the largest private collection that I have ever seen. In fact, the collection has grown so large that part of it has been donated to several of the larger regional natural history museums including the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis in Leiden and the Museum of Natural History in Rotterdam. Through the years the Hessels have traveled all over Europe, the US, Venezuela, Central America, the Dominican Republic, Australia, New Zealand and other distant locations collecting fossil shell beds. Their expeditions were not one or two days of collecting during vacation but endeavors lasting three weeks or more. I spent much of my time taking photos of individual specimens and did not capture many pictures of the rows and rows of drawers and shelves. The first floor of the combined townhouses contain nothing but fossil mollusks. The two basements are too low to stand because the engineers involved with the project would not dig them any deeper due stablitiy issues. The strategy is to crouch or sit while viewing items. One basement contains non-mollusk fossils such as echinoids and vertebrates and the other of recent shells.

Below are pictures that I took.

Piet and Jeannette Hessel at their home and fossil shell museum and downstairs in the sitting room only modern shell room.

A few of the many fossil showcases.

Some of the rarer shells from the Eocene of France including Gisortia gigantea far left. Here is a link to this bizarre shell prior to reconstruction (http://www.fossilshe...cuisgast47.html).

Rarer shells from the Miocene of France.

Fossil echinoids

Just a few of the vertebrate fossils for you bone guys. I took these pictures because they were unusual. The first is a Carcharocles megalodon tooth from the Chipola River but not from the Miocene Chipola Formation. The presence of Turritella alumensis in the matrix show that it is from the Upper Pliocene Alum Bluff Formation which is also exposed on the Chipola. This formation (my next post) is Piacenzian Stage and by this time megalodon was extinct so it could be a redeposited tooth in the Jackson Bluff. The next tooth is a rare meg from the French Miocene. To the far right is an impressive Stegodon elephant tusk from the Pliocene of Java.

Fossil shells from the Miocene of Australia. The first two are pictures of Gigantocypraea gigas the largest cowrie to ever exist. Note the Euro for comparison.

Fossil shells from the Pliocene Roe Calcarinite of Western Australia. I have a few species from this formation that I received in trade and I have been interested in its fauna since. The deposit is Upper Pliocene Piacenzian stage and is of the same age as the Tamiami, Duplin and Yorktown formations that I have written about in the past. All of these shell beds along with those from the namesake deposits in Italy represented a warm period with rising sea levels which produced a burst of molluscan speciation.

I have always been interested in taxa which were once plentiful in earlier eras but are represented in the Cenozoic by few representatives such as brachiopods, crinoids and cephalopods. There are some Paleocene, Eocene and Miocene cephalopods in the US however they are mostly found as internal casts. Piet has several cephalopods with original shell preservered. Left to right: Eutrephoceras parisiense and Nautilus sp. from the Eocene of the Paris basin, Nautilus allionii from the French Miocene and Aturia aturi from the Miocene of Italy.