Solnhofen Caturus Museum Fossil Fish

Description: This is a very well preserved and curated specimen. The skull and teeth display well. Some of the skin, as well as all the fins are fully exposed. The fish is well centered on an unbroken plate of Solnhofen limestone.

The Solnhofen limestone is a Jurassic Konservat-Lagerstätte that preserves a rare assemblage of fossilized organisms. Others, like the early bird Archaeopteryx are preserved in such detail that they are among the most famous and most beautiful fossils in the world.

During the Late Jurassic, this area was an archipelago at the edge of the Tethys Sea. This included placid lagoons that had limited access to the open sea and where salinity rose high enough that the resulting brine could not support life. Since the lowest water was devoid of oxygen, many ordinary scavengers were absent. Any organism that fell, drifted, or was washed into the lagoons from the ocean or the land became buried in soft carbonate mud and was therefore wonderfully preserved.

The fine-grained texture of the mud silt forming the limestone from the Solnhofen area (which is composed mainly of the towns of Solnhofen and Eichstätt) is ideal for making lithographic plates, and extensive quarrying in the 19th century revealed many fossil finds.