Geosciences Working Group

Lecturers: Jürgen Reinhardt & Andreas Witzel
The quarry at Piesberg near Osnabrück is one of the largest in Europe its coal was already mined in historical times. The Piesberg exposes the Upper Carboniferous, represent deposits of the Carboniferous greenhouse climate in which the forests flourished extremely well. For this reason, many plant fossils are found in these beds, but the Piesberg is also known for its animal fossils. For a long time, the site was famous mainly for horseshoe crabs, but for some time now, fossils that are visually far less attractive have been making headlines. These are rather small and inconspicuous, but scientifically enormously important. This lecture reports about old and recent finds from the Piesberg.

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