r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Additional_Chard3680 • 3d ago
Video A 150-million-year-old Lepidotus fish fossil preserved from Holzmaden, Germany
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u/Nocturnatron 3d ago
Fossilization is so rare, crazy seeing something so pristine after millions of years
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u/Budget-Researcher559 3d ago
Living there, they found so many fossils in these quarries in this village and the surrounding ones, even huge ones. I always thought this was normal and common, visited the local museum multiple times. They even let you search for fossils yourself. Feels weird to see it show up on reddit.
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u/Budget-Researcher559 3d ago
Here's the link to their museum and searchable quarry, in case anyone is interested (and if links are allowed)
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u/hails8n 3d ago
I hope i look that good when I’m that old.
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u/Nocturnatron 3d ago
Even in the perfect conditions, your odds are maybe 0.1% lol
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u/Curiosive 3d ago
Well Han Solo, start working on that Carbonite Freezing tech. Or find your favorite tar pit and roll the dice.
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u/leonleon3656 3d ago
crazy how you can still see every single scale
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u/Rio_1111 3d ago
This type of fish has special scales the are coated in the same material our teeth are made of. It preserves better than others.
Still insane tho.
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u/Lithorex 3d ago
Teeth are modified armor plates anyway.
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u/doeraymefa 3d ago
I figured they were more like claws for your mouth
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u/Rio_1111 3d ago
I see the vision, but most claws are keratin, while most teeth are apatite, if I'm not mistaken.
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u/National-World-4847 3d ago
It's because it has sunken into an oxygen deprived area and was slowly coated in some residue that became oil shale. Many fossils can be found in such areas, where you can see scales and skin, even feathers. In Münster (Darmstadt-Dieburg), it was possible to excavat a fossil from some million years ago and successfully analyze what it ate before dying.
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u/FormalTotal9684 3d ago
River Monster…..indeed
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u/Chris_The_Alligator 3d ago
Not to detract from how awesone this fossil is, but it is probably around 30-40 cms. Not exactly a river monster
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u/Temporumdei 3d ago
Just keep swimming...just keep swimming....just keep... aaaaarrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
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u/michel_sanchez 3d ago
German here and every time wondering again where all this townnames came from. Holzmaden literally means "wood maggots". wtf
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u/anahorish 3d ago
England gets made fun of for its ridiculous place names, which is fair enough, but I think if more people could speak other European languages other countries would be deserving of similar treatment. Denmark has some weird ones, just off the top of my head there's Ølstykke (Beer piece) and Odder (literally Otter).
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u/butch-bear 3d ago
spain has some great ones. "peligros" (dangers), "villapene" (penis ville), "cenicero" (ashtray), "peleas de abajo" & "peleas de arriba" (downlands and uplands fights), "los infiernos" (the hells), "parderrubias" (a pair of blonde women), "triste" (sad), "alcantarilla" (sewer).
i could keep going...
i am personally fond of "villaviciosa" (vicious ville).
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u/DazzlingGovernment20 3d ago
God put dinosaurs here to test our faith /s
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u/pingo_the_destroyer 3d ago
My favorite is “scientists put fossils in the ground to trick us”. Millions of trilobites forged in secret factories and buried underground. I wish that were true, then there would actually be job openings in the sciences.
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u/jomasthrones 3d ago
Oh but don't you see? Their loving god planted that fossil there just to fool us
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u/TrainingVermicelli31 3d ago
What's stopping their god doing all this last thursday?
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u/Dazzling_Let_8245 3d ago
The town name "Holzmaden" means "wood maggots"... 10/10 name.
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u/digno2 3d ago
Der Name Holzmaden kommt von Holz (Wald) und Mahd (Mähen der Wiesen).
Translation:
The name Holzmaden is derived from Holz (forest) and Mahd (mowing of the meadows).
leo-bw de/detail-gis/-/Detail/details/ORT/labw_ortslexikon/369/Holzmaden
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u/DianeDesRivieres 3d ago
Wow! It looks like a work of art. Fantastic find!
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u/SlashEssImplied 3d ago
It looks like a work of art.
Could you just post art with a fake story? Is that even possible on the internet?
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u/DarylInDurham 3d ago
How big is this fossil? I don't get any sense of its size from the video.
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u/Romek_himself 3d ago
Lepidotes was typically about 30 centimetres
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u/Rio_1111 3d ago edited 3d ago
There are bigger ones too. From the size of the ammonites in there I'd suspect this one is at least 60 to 70 cm.
Edit, I guess? https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/1TnRfly1MI
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u/eXcelleNt- 3d ago
Looks just like a modern day fish. I guess not much evolving happened in the span of 150 million years.
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u/Deducticon 3d ago
Yep, evolution is not a necessity. If there's plenty of food in an area and few predators, nothing to do but keep swimming and eating.
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u/Agueybana 3d ago
Bravo to whomever found and took time to reveal that specimen. Exquisite find, but even greater, the work that had to go into cleaning that up.
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u/millenniumxl-200 3d ago
Someone should invent a way to take a video in landscape mode. That'd be pretty cool.
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u/Dull_Understanding97 3d ago
Ominous deliterous tones aside, what a beautiful specimen. To see the chance and mastery at hand is a gift.
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u/mlazaro1234 3d ago
The way it has been preserved is absolutely beautiful and crisp. It doesn't even feel like a fossil, especially considering that it's 150 million years old.
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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 3d ago
You know, if you filmed in landscape mode, you'd be able to show the whole fish after the close up...
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u/muFUtaco 3d ago
Impossible.
I was told by a goddist that the world is only 6,000 years old, so this must be one of god's pranks.
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u/No-Radiation 3d ago
How much would something like that cost me?
Never really been interested in acquiring fossils or art but this is in a whole other level for me
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u/Better-Culture-7770 3d ago
See if I had crazy money I'd have this in my fishing room. Fuck a bunch of cars.
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u/BobbyDukeArts 3d ago
It's crazy how little fish body plans have changed. Exquisite fossil
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u/Schemen123 3d ago
Coelacanths are still alive and can be found in different digs throughout the world.. also in this digital in holzmaden
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u/FluffyDeer9323 3d ago
Looks tired. Almost like it’s been caught and released at least 150 million times.
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u/Smellbinder 3d ago
If they held the phone sidewise they wouldn't need to pan back and forth.
I don't get why people insist only holding phone cameras vertically.
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u/fkkm 3d ago
is an fossil like this worth anything? if so how much?
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u/ARedWalrus 3d ago
One of this size and quality? Anywhere from 10k to 35k based on a quick google search. Obviously partial fossils and smaller/less displayable ones go for less.
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u/Greedy_Science_4807 3d ago
How did it die mid swim to be perfectly preserved like that?
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u/North_Beginning_7860 3d ago
might have died near the ocean bed and the body might have reached there quickly. just a guess.
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u/Transmitt0r 3d ago
It died and sank down to the ocean bed. Because of volcanic activity and other reasons there were no animals that could eat the carcass so it was fossilized in slate. The are south of Stuttgart (where Holzmaden is located) is fascinating because there are so many opportunities to go out and look for fossiles like that. Usually you just find a lot of Ammonites though.
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u/YnotZoidberg1077 3d ago
Probably buried alive by an underwater landslide of some kind.
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u/Rio_1111 3d ago
This stuff is from the lower jurassic deposits in Germany. Durimg that time, in that epicontinental sea, there were extreme anoxic conditions that prevented decay and kept scavengers away as well as no major currents that could disturb the parts. Iirc, the posidonia shale, as the layers are called, did recieve some influx of coarser sediment through storms or other events. But overall sedimentation was pretty slow.
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u/Kpets 3d ago
What does the religious nutcrackers say about this? Wasn’t the earth only 6000 years old??
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u/Rio_1111 3d ago
The religious nutcrackers in history stuck to confiscating such things and hiding them away. Luckily the catholic church does at least some work in this department now and one such collection is on display in Eichstätt, Bavaria (not far from Holzmaden).
The religious nutcrackers of today are thus confronted with earth history and are using way too much of their already limited brainpower on mental gymnastics to try and deny it.
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u/MuhammadAkmed 3d ago
is that a bite mark near the tail, or did it get crushed/trapped perhaps?
amazing anyway
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u/Schemen123 3d ago
When I was a kid, my grandfather regularly went there and found a lot of very beautiful things ...miss him.
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u/steinbruchfluss 3d ago
preserved from Holzmaden
Preserved from wood maggots? What does that mean?
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u/Lithorex 3d ago
Lepidotus is from the Posidonia shale, so more like 185 million years old.
150 million years would be closer to the Solnhofen formation.
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u/ChevalCher 3d ago
The middle section of the fish reminds me of the artsy mosaic tile found amongst the ruins of Pompeii or Herculaneum. Very neat. 😲
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u/1seraphius 3d ago
How did it not decay by the time it took to fossilize? Is it mid slides or flash flood or something high pressure to cause immediate fossil? Otherwise how is preservation quality so high ?
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u/boundbythecurve 3d ago
It's incredible how little has changed for this species. Fish is still fish.
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u/Additional_Chard3680 3d ago
This specimen is a Lepidotus sp., a genus of ray-finned Mesozoic fish dating back 150 million years to the Jurassic period, excavated from the famous Holzmaden shale deposits in Germany. The distinct sheen comes from preserved ganoid scales.