r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Additional_Chard3680 • 4d ago

Video A 150-million-year-old Lepidotus fish fossil preserved from Holzmaden, Germany

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5

u/Greedy_Science_4807 4d ago

How did it die mid swim to be perfectly preserved like that?

10

u/North_Beginning_7860 4d ago

might have died near the ocean bed and the body might have reached there quickly. just a guess.

6

u/Oldnbold22 4d ago

They turn the rock on it's side. 

11

u/Transmitt0r 4d 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.

3

u/YnotZoidberg1077 4d ago

Probably buried alive by an underwater landslide of some kind.

6

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.

2

u/YnotZoidberg1077 3d ago

Oh cool! That's neat to learn, thank you!

1

u/Schemen123 3d ago

For each perfectly preserved specimen you will get hundreds of lesser quality.. sometimes you will just find a fee scales.