Messel pit
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How it came to be
Near the village of Messel, about 35 km south-east of Frankfurt, lies a maar lake some 47 million years old, from the Eocene. Its oil shale holds fossils preserved in rare detail, from complete skeletons to feathers, skin, hair and stomach contents.
Brown coal and then oil shale were mined here from 1859. Some 20 million tonnes of rock were removed over about a century, and the fossils became known around 1900. When commercial mining ended in 1971, a plan to turn the pit into a rubbish dump raised scientific and public concern.
The plan was dropped, and the state of Hesse bought the site in 1991. More than 1,000 species of plants and animals have been found, among them early relatives of the horse and insects that keep their colours. In 2009 the primate Darwinius masillae was described. The pit was inscribed in 1995.
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