Famous Fossil Sites
Most of the world's rocks contain a few fossils here and there. But a handful of special places have preserved entire ancient ecosystems in extraordinary detail. These sites (called lagerstatten, German for "stores") are the goldmines of palaeontology. They show us what an entire Cambrian ocean looked like, or an entire Jurassic lake, or what kinds of animals lived alongside Tyrannosaurus rex. Almost every major step forward in our understanding of ancient life has come from one of these special fossil sites.
- Most famous lagerstattenBurgess Shale, Solnhofen, Messel
- Oldest preserves complex animalsBurgess Shale, Canada508 million years
- Famous for feathered dinosaursYixian Formation, China125 million years
- Famous for ArchaeopteryxSolnhofen, Germany150 million years
- Famous for Ice Age mammalsLa Brea Tar Pits, Los Angeles40,000 years
- UK fossil hotspotJurassic Coast, Dorset195 to 145 million years
The world's greatest fossil sites
Burgess Shale (Canada, 508 million years old)
High in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, the Burgess Shale preserves an entire Cambrian ocean ecosystem in fine detail. Discovered in 1909 by American palaeontologist Charles Walcott, the site contains soft-bodied creatures of types never seen before. Many of them belong to entirely extinct branches of the animal kingdom (like the five-eyed predator Opabinia and the spike-covered Hallucigenia). The Burgess Shale showed for the first time how varied early animal life really was.
Solnhofen Limestone (Germany, 150 million years old)
An ancient tropical lagoon in southern Germany. Its fine limestone preserves an astonishing variety of late Jurassic animals: fish, pterosaurs, dragonflies, jellyfish (extremely rare for jellyfish), small dinosaurs and most famously the first known bird, Archaeopteryx. Quarried since Roman times for its smooth limestone slabs, the site has been a fossil treasure trove since the 1860s.
Hell Creek Formation (Montana, USA, 67 to 66 million years old)
The end of the dinosaur era. This rock formation preserves the last ecosystems before the asteroid impact, including T. rex, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus and many others. Among the most famous fossils here are "Sue" the most complete T. rex skeleton ever found (now in the Field Museum, Chicago), and recently the so-called "Tanis site", which may preserve fish that died on the very day of the asteroid impact.
Yixian Formation (China, 125 million years old)
An ancient lake in China that has produced an explosion of feathered dinosaur fossils since the 1990s. Many have feathers preserved in such detail that scientists can work out their colours. Almost every famous "feathered dinosaur" image of the last 30 years comes from Yixian.
La Brea Tar Pits (Los Angeles, USA, last 50,000 years)
Sticky natural asphalt that has trapped Ice Age animals for tens of thousands of years. Animals walked into the tar, got stuck, and were preserved. The pits have produced over 3.5 million fossils, including sabre-toothed cats (Smilodon), dire wolves, mammoths, giant ground sloths and the famous "La Brea Woman" (the only human skeleton ever found at the site). The pits are still actively bubbling up tar in the middle of modern Los Angeles.
Messel Pit (Germany, 47 million years old)
An old volcanic crater lake that preserved early mammals, birds, fish and insects in stunning detail. Some Messel mammals are preserved with stomach contents, fur and even skin colour patterns intact. A World Heritage Site since 1995.
Riversleigh and Naracoorte (Australia)
Two Australian fossil sites that preserve over 250 million years of Australia's unique mammal evolution: marsupial lions, giant kangaroos, terror birds and the strange platypus and echidna ancestors. Together they show how Australia's animals became so different from those of any other continent.
The UK's Jurassic Coast
One of the most famous fossil sites on Earth is right on Britain's south coast. The Jurassic Coast in Dorset and east Devon is a 153 km stretch of cliffs that records 185 million years of Earth's history. The cliffs constantly erode, exposing new fossils. Famous fossils from here include:
- Ammonites: spiral-shelled sea creatures, common all along the coast.
- Ichthyosaurs: dolphin-like marine reptiles. The first complete ichthyosaur skeleton was found by 12-year-old Mary Anning in 1811 at Lyme Regis.
- Plesiosaurs: long-necked marine reptiles, also first described from Mary Anning's finds.
- Pterosaurs: flying reptile bones.
- Dinosaur footprints: occasionally exposed in the cliffs near Lulworth Cove.
The Jurassic Coast became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. You can still find fossils along the beaches today, with rangers and guidebooks to help.
Deeper dive: how palaeontologists actually find new fossils
People imagine palaeontology as digging carefully in a desert with a small brush. The reality is more interesting and more varied. Most modern fossil discoveries happen in one of three ways.
1. Surface prospecting. The most common method. Researchers walk slowly across known fossil-bearing rock exposures, looking for bits of bone or shell freshly weathered out of the cliff face by the latest winter's rain. When they spot something promising, they trace it back to find the rest. Almost every famous dinosaur fossil started as a small splinter spotted at the right moment.
2. Quarrying. Industrial limestone, slate and shale quarries regularly expose fossils as workers cut into fresh rock. Many of the world's most famous fossils, including Archaeopteryx, came from commercial quarries. Some quarry owners now alert palaeontologists when they spot something interesting; others sell important finds to the highest bidder.
3. Construction sites. Roadworks, mining and major construction routinely turn up fossils as excavators dig through old rock. The famous Tasmanian Tiger fossil came from a road cutting. The Coltness asphalt pits and many other Scottish sites were exposed by mining.
Once a promising specimen has been identified, the careful work begins. Bones are documented and photographed in place. Surrounding rock is removed in jacket-like plaster casts that protect the fossil during transport. Back in the lab, technicians spend months or years carefully removing the rock matrix grain by grain to reveal the fossil inside. A single famous specimen might involve thousands of hours of skilled preparation work before it is ready to study or display.
For more, see dinosaurs, the fossil record and living fossils.