Newsletter #199 Fossils: Top Fossil Hunting Sites in the Netherlands
Newsletter about nature and science
Fossils: Top Fossil Hunting Sites in the Netherlands
Perhaps you think that finding fossils is something for far-off lands: a Tyrannosaurus in Colorado. But closer to home, on the Jurassic Coast of Southern England, Mary Anning found a skeleton of an ichthyosaur – a long-extinct marine reptile – back in 1811, when she was just 12 years old.
Astonishing was the find made as a young boy on a sunken lane near Epen in Limburg: a large piece of coal with the unmistakable imprint of a large plant. It had to be old. Not realizing how old it actually was. It dates from the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago. A find right near the Heimans quarry, which has since been declared a geological monument. There, coal layers come to the surface that once originated in a place where Suriname lies today.
Yes, there are quite a few special fossil sites in the Netherlands, petrifications of plants and animals or their imprints. Together with fossil expert Harry Huisman, we review the top five locations at the Hunebedcentrum in Borger. For this, we travel throughout the country, going further and further back in time.
1. The Maasvlakte
We begin at the Maasvlakte near Rotterdam. There, you can simply stumble upon bones and molars of mammoths. These can be 40,000 years old or older. These finds date from the time when there was a direct land connection to England in what is also called Doggerland. Around 8,000 years ago, this came to an end and the land was submerged.
Due to climate change, the mammoths here had already been driven away; until 4,000 years ago they still lived on the Siberian island of Wrangel. The current finds from the North Sea – and everywhere sand is dredged onto the North Sea beaches – are not fossils in the strict sense. Harry Huisman explains that these are still real, non-petrified bones, tusks, and molars; therefore, they are given the name sub-fossils. This also applies to the horn of a Soay sheep which, fished up above the Dogger Bank, points to early livestock farmers, certainly ten thousand years ago.
2. Cadzand and Walcheren
Finds of real fossil shark teeth on the beach of Cadzand in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen and on that of Walcheren date from much earlier. The teeth, over 7 cm long, found in Cadzand (and on Belgian beaches) likely come from the four (or even ten) meter long broad-toothed white shark.
Apart from the mineralized teeth, nothing remains of these enormous cartilaginous fish that swam around 20 million years ago. Shark teeth found on the De Kaloot beach near Vlissingen are another thirty million years older, together with fossil shells from the same era.
3. Sint Pietersberg
In the marl quarries of the Sint Pietersberg in Maastricht, skull parts of a fearsome sea lizard, the Mosasaurus (now in Teylers Museum in Haarlem), were found in 1766. About seventy million years ago, these animals, up to 18 meters long, made the seas unsafe.
Twelve years later, in 1774, a virtually complete skull was recovered under the leadership of Hoffmann, including the enormous rows of teeth. This was stolen on Napoleon’s orders in 1794 and this world-famous specimen of Mosasaurus hoffmanni still lies in the Museum of Natural History in Paris. Scandalous, according to Harry Huisman.
Fortunately for Maastricht, a complete, 12-meter-long related sea lizard was found again in the Pietersberg in 1998. The people of Maastricht call the animal Bèr, but the scientific name is a bit longer: Prognathodon saturator.
4. Winterswijk
During the greatest extinction event we know of, 252 million years ago, 96 percent of all living animals on earth lost their lives. Cause: volcanic eruptions in Siberia. Those who profited from this can be found in a not-so-large stone quarry near Winterswijk. Here is a site of Muschelkalk, shell limestone that is used in agriculture as dolomite lime.
And in these layers, which begin only one and a half meters below the surface, we find fossil skeletal parts of 240-million-year-old plesiosaurs. By now, two species of the genus Nothosaurus have been found here, water predators up to a maximum of one meter in length. Who knows what else is to be found. Recently, in addition to a very old woodlouse, an unknown fish species was also found.
There is a monthly excursion in the quarry in Winterswijk where one can also search, but, Harry Huisman warns, one must register for this.
5. Northern Netherlands
A bit further north, it is a real fossil feast. That is the richest fossil site in Europe, if one is to believe Harry. And we do, because as he explains, the Northern Netherlands is the European geological sinkhole.
Rivers like the Rhine, the Meuse, the Scheldt, the Elbe, and the Weser only ever flowed into this area. And above all, so did the Eridanos, the gigantic river of 2,700 kilometers in length that flowed from Northern Scandinavia into the Northern Netherlands from forty to one million years ago. It roughly followed the current Baltic Sea. All these currents dragged large quantities of erratic boulders and old fossils to this region.
Therefore, it is not surprising that we can find fossils from many corners of the world here, and it should come as no surprise that this includes, for example, fossil corals that are 440 million years old. Many of these fossils can be found in the Hondsrug. Harry Huisman describes them in a book that will be released soon. But in a future podcast, we will also pay attention to such fossils, which we might just encounter along the way. They must have come to the surface, for example, when roadworks were done, or farmers cultivated their lands.
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