Quarry at the lime kiln

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The "Am Kalkofen" quarry is a disused quarry in Allagen , Westendorf district , a district of the city of Warstein .

location

The small abandoned quarry is located about one kilometer north of Westendorf in the agricultural landscape of the Haarstrang , 11 kilometers south of the city of Soest in Westphalia. Marl lime was mined here until 1968 and burned to mortar in a lime kiln directly on site; the lime kiln remained after the operation was shut down. The former quarry is located in a hollow where the softer marl and marl lime that were present here were removed between two layers of hard limestone.

geology

Up here are about 18 meters thick marls and marl limestone of the upper Cenomanian to lower Turonian , a level of the Upper Cretaceous , some of which are colored green by glauconite . This belongs to the so-called Plänerkalk of the northwest German Upper Cretaceous. The layers dip at about 2 to 3 degrees to the north, so they appear almost horizontally when viewed. The sediments were deposited in a shallow sea basin that increased in depth from west to east, the deposits originate from an area relatively close to the coast.

The fossil record of the strata is fluctuating, it is not outstandingly individual, but quite rich in species. The layers in the top (hanging) and bottom (lying) sections of the outcrop show only a few fossils. A rich fish fauna, occurrence of mussels, such as the genera Mytiloides and Inoceramus , ammonites , z. B. Mammites , brachiopods such as Orbirhynchia and Terebratulina and sea ​​urchins , mostly fragmented by secondary rearrangement, also the solitary coral Parasmilia centralis . The single find of a fossilized pearl is remarkable.

Exploration and Protection

The exploration was visited quite often by fossil collectors and gained scientific interest through tips from them to the conservationists . That is why the Westphalian Museum of Natural History carried out a scientific excavation in 1991. As a result, the quarry, as well as the subsequent, non-mined lime up to a distance of approx. 100 meters, was designated as a paleontological ground monument . In the list of monuments of the city of Warstein, the localities of Allagen and Niederbergheim, the site is listed as soil monument no. 2 under the designation “Marl pit” (entry from April 30, 1996).

See also

Literature and Sources

  • Ulrich Kaplan (1992): The deep Turon of Allagen-Westendorf (Westphalia). Geology and Paleontology in Westphalia 21: 115–129.
  • Detlef Grzegorczyk, Almuth Gumprecht, Alfred Hendricks, Klaus-Peter Lanser (2005): Application of the Monument Protection Act of North Rhine-Westphalia in the field of paleontology. With a sample collection of paleontological ground monuments (sample collection of paleontological ground monuments 11.7: The Turon of Warstein-Allagen / District of Soest). Geology and Paleontology in Westphalia 63: 5–49.

Web links

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 52 "  N , 8 ° 14 ′ 59"  E