Weinviertel fossil world

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Map of Carpathian 17-13 million years

The Fossil World Weinviertel is located in Stetten and presents the largest accessible fossil oyster reef on earth.

The reef near Stetten

This reef dates from around 17 million years ago ( Neogen , Miocene , Carpathian ). At that time the Korneuburg Basin was part of an estuary , an elongated river mouth into which a tropical, shallow sea, the Paratethys, reached far. The coast of this sea ran just west of the line Korneuburg - Obergänserndorf - Kleinebersdorf , the later Bisamberg and the reef near Stetten protruded as an island from this sea. The originally flat reef has tilted by about 24 degrees due to tectonic movements since its formation.

museum

Weinviertel fossil world
The oyster beds

The reef is accessible in a roughly 400 m² hall and contains around 15,000 prepared giant oysters. After more than 20 years of excavation and research work, the museum “Fossil World Weinviertel” was opened around the reef on June 5, 2009. There you will find an “oyster cinema”, a pearl exhibition (with the largest fossil pearl, on loan from the Natural History Museum in Vienna), a fossil museum , a 17 meter high observation tower modeled on a snail and mining fields. In these fields, people are offered to dig for fossils such as shark teeth and pearls themselves.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Wolfgang Sovis, Brigitta Schmid (ed.): The Karpat of the Korneuburg basin . Part 1, Vienna 1998. Part 2, Vienna 2002. Publishing house of the Association for the Promotion of Paleontology . In the series Contributions to Paleontology . Volumes 23 and 27, ISBN 3-510-56025-6 .
  2. The observation tower: A look into the present and the past on the website of Fossilienwelt GmbH

Web links

Commons : Fossilienwelt Weinviertel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 48 ° 21 ′ 59 "  N , 16 ° 21 ′ 33"  E