Place a tool against the edge of a limestone slab from the Altmühl Valley and strike it lightly. The stone splits along a bedding plane, clean as a book page. The resulting surface is so fine-grained that it can be printed on—and fine enough to hold the impression of a single quill pen.

Twenty facts, counted backward: about a tropical shallow sea some 150 million years ago, about lagoons cut off from the open ocean by sponge and algal reefs, about a hypersaline and oxygen-free zone at the bottom of these basins, about the feather that gave Archaeopteryx its name and probably didn't even come from it, and about animals that died there while still walking—you find the trace, and at the end of the trace lies the one who made it.

For context: The number of known Archaeopteryx specimens is given as between ten and fourteen, depending on the source, and there are reasons for this, which are explained in the video. The Haarlem specimen was assigned to a different genus in 2017, and the position of Archaeopteryx in the avian family tree remains controversial. The age estimates for the Solnhofen limestone also vary between approximately 143 and 153 million years.

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#Altmühltal #Solnhofen #Archaeopteryx #Fossils #Jurassic