Search the Community

I was invited last Saturday to take part in a meeting of amateur and professional paleontologists in the Rhine valley. We met at a place called the Kahlenberg in Ringsheim. This used to be an iron ore mine before it was turned into a garbage dump in the 70's and was transformed a couple of decades later into a modern recycling center, developing methods of recycling which have been copied all over the world. The entire site, about 100 acres, has been renaturalized and is cultivated in such a way that it has become a breeding place and habitat for many rare flora and fauna. It is also a well-known site for geological and paleontological research where a small section of the area is set aside for this purpose. We were shown a couple of films about the recycling methods and the flora and fauna and then we were treated to an extremely informative lecture about the geology and fossil fauna of the Aalenian and Bajocian layers which are exposed here. The site is generally off limits to collectors, but our group was allowed to do a couple of hours of digging after lunch. I was lucky enough to find this perfectly preserved and complete 6cm. long Trigonia costata bivalve from the Bajocian humphresianum zone.