Fine Ophiopinna Jurassic Brittlestar Fossils Mass Mortality

Description: Offered is a fine plate containing one fully complete and three mostly complete brittle stars. The preservation is typical of the fossils found at the La Voulte-sur-Rhone quarries.

The site preserves a marine system of the Lower Callovian stage, a little over 160 mya. The sequence is exposed in a series of quarries at La Boissine, west of the village of La Voulte-sur-Rhône. Iron pyrites in the silty shale are symptoms of an anoxic environment. The site was recognized among French paleontologists from the mid-nineteenth century for its finely detailed fossils.