Mosbacher Sands

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mosbacher Sande or Mosbach-Sande refers to deposits of the Rhine , Main and Taunus brooks from the Ice Age ( Pleistocene ) in the area of ​​the former village of Mosbach between Wiesbaden and Biebrich , which was later incorporated into Wiesbaden. The Mosbach Sands are one of the most important fossil sites in Europe with remains of Ice Age animals.

Research history

The first remains of animals from the Ice Age were discovered in Mosbach in 1845. In 1891 the municipality of Biebrich-Mosbach received town charter. But Biebrich had gained such dominance through castle , Rhine traffic, industry and barracks that the name Mosbach was omitted in 1893. In 1926 the city of Biebrich and thus also Mosbach was incorporated into Wiesbaden. The Natural History Museum in Mainz has more than 25,000 finds from the Mosbach Sands the largest collection of Ice Age animals in the Rhine-Main area . The historically first collection with around 1,090 pieces is stored in the Wiesbaden Museum . According to a recommendation of the German Stratigraphic Commission from 1977 for deposits or layer complexes, one speaks today of Mosbach sands instead of Mosbacher sands. They encompass a large fund horizon in Mainz-Kastel , at Hesslerhof , in Biebrich -Ost, in Dyckerhoffbruch and in Salzbachtal .

Educational age

The Mosbach sands were deposited in the Cromer warm period about 850,000 to 475,000 years ago. The Cromer complex is named after an English site near Cromer in Norfolk and includes four warm periods and four cold periods . Remnants of an animal world, reminiscent of today's conditions in Africa , appear in layers that correspond to a warm period within the Cromer about 600,000 years ago. Deposits from the Neckar in Mauer near Heidelberg, in which the lower jaw of Mauer , the type specimen of Homo heidelbergensis , came to light, are similarly old .

Selection of fossils

The remains of numerous large vertebrates have been discovered in the Mosbach sands:

With a total length of up to about 3.60 meters, the Mosbacher lion is the largest fossil-documented lion in Germany and Europe. Only the American cave lion ( Panthera leo atrox ) is slightly larger at up to 3.70 meters.

literature

  • Thomas Keller: The Ice Age Mosbach Sands near Wiesbaden: Old and Middle Pleistocene mammal finds from deposits of the Ur-Maines (= paleontological monuments in Hesse. Volume 3). State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse, Wiesbaden 1994.
  • Helmut Hemmer, Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke, Thomas Keller: Panthera onca gombaszoegensis (Kretzoi, 1938) from the early Middle Pleistocene Mosbach-Sands (Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany) - A contribution to the knowledge of the variability and distribution history of the jaguar. In: New Yearbook for Geology and Paleontology. Volume 229, No. 1, 2003, pp. 31-60.
  • Helmut Hemmer, Ralf-Dietrich Kahlke, Thomas Keller: Cheetahs in the Middle Pleistocene of Europe: Acinonyx pardinensis (sensu lato) intermedius (Thenius, 1954) from the Mosbach sands (Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany). In: New Yearbook for Geology and Paleontology. Volume 249, No. 3, 2008, pp. 345-356.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Museum Wiesbaden Natural History State Collection, Paleontology: The Mosbach Collection .

Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 0 ″  N , 8 ° 16 ′ 0 ″  E