A rare cenomanian echinoid in Germany

Saturday 19^th of April, western Germany.

I arrived half an hour earlier then we agreed and met my friend Patrick a couple of minutes later. We hadn’t taken one step in to the quarry but Patrick was about to get lucky. One of the workers asked if we were going to look for fossils. He did this in German and I think because Patrick spoke fluently German, it was him to get the BIG surprise. We followed the worker and he showed us a gigantic ammonite (35 inch +). And Patrick got it for free, wow.

When we came back to the cars the other 18 members of our group dropped in, and were just as amazed as we were.

On the parking lot we exchanged some fossils and finally we entered the quarry. Things started of good. Taco (yet another fossil friend of mine) found a very nice ammonite, but by extracting it from the rock it broke in to. Later on that day I agreed to trade it with him.

Lots of people found ammonites, big and small. And irregular echinoids (Holaster) were a very common find too.

While I was hammering away at a rock, I saw on the same rock pile a few meters up a big piece of rock that somehow got my interest. From that distance it was impossible for me to spot any fossils on the surface of it. When I got nearer I was stunned, there was a one inch wide regular echinoid sticking for one third out of that rock! I called my friend Taco and it took us one hour to hammer it out in a mandible piece we could carry to the car.

At 18.00 most of the people went satisfied home. There were even folks that found a sharks tooth (Cretolamna appendiculata).

Gerrit-Jan (our groups leader), Marietta and her son and myself, stayed for a couple of hours longer. And just before we too decided to leave I found a big ammonite too, actually there were two ammonites and one nautiloid in that piece of rock, yes!