Monday, August 30, 2010

Field trip to the chalk-quarry Laegerdorf


In July our small group of hobby-micropaleontologists heads to the chalk-quarry Laegerdorf near Hamburg: doors are open, it its collectors Sunday. While our macropaleontological colleagues are already busy with their heavy equipment and first findings of belemnites are reported we discuss the stratigrafical setting:





















We soon skip our plan to match stratigrafical maps in the literature with sampling in the quarry. We do a chronological sampling and hope, that the micropaleontological content will tell us more.










After 7 hours of continous sampling we have 15 bags of 500g. Mircofossils are not observable, with a magnifying glas: 0,00.
What have you got ? is the question of our colleagues with the buckets full of belemnits, starfish, sponges ...
Yeah , oh my god - us ? - we don't know ...

Our field trip starts back home. After cleaning, washing, sieving of 1/3 of the first bag a residue with fraction > 63µm is left:




















In three such spoons we find hundreds of foraminifera and other microfossil specimens. Cleaning needs to be improved though.

Some prominent index foraminifera for the Lower Upper Campanian/ Upper lower Campanian found are these:


Neoflabellina buticula






Stensioeina pommerana







Bolivinoides decoratus (var. decoratus ?)





Learn more about our findings at
Laegerdorf Sample 22


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