The following is my translation of an article called: Streifzüge durch die Fauna der Solnhofener Plattenkalk von Karl Waale, Neu-Ruppin. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1909, Heft 12, Seiten 372-377. As can be seen from the eleven photos accompanying the original article, and even more clearly from the fossils and bits of Solnhofen stone in the glass-fronted cabinet to my right, the limestone from this place is pleasingly beautiful in both colour and texture. It's a very finely-grained, golden, smooth stone of up to 98% purity. At least, this would be clearer if I'd included the photos or you happened to be in my attic. The best way to appreciate this stuff is to go to Solnhofen and see for yourself. There are various fine museums in the area, and one is in the town hall conveniently across the road from the railway station. (Direct services run from both Nuremberg and Munich, but not all trains use that route. You might have to change at Treuchtlingen.) After feasting on the fossils, it'd be a good idea to turn left at the level crossing, and carry on walking for a hundred yards or so. Assuming it's open (quite possibly not the case during the winter), the large restaurant usually offers a very tempting roast boar Wildschweinbraten.
Terminology
The systematics and nomenclature of some of the groups of organisms mentioned aren't very familiar to me. It would be sagacious to assume that some of the classifications must have been revised (quite possibly on many occasions.) I'm also not aware of appropriate translations for some of the German terms. Possibly, in several instances, there aren't any. For example, calling a pterosaur a 'flight lizard' wouldn't be intelligible in English, but it works in German.
I'm not aware of any previous translations.
Trevor Dykes.

Tours through the fauna of the Solnhofen Plattenkalk by Karl Waale, Neu-Ruppin
There is no other place on the whole surface of the Earth where the pages of the diary of the evolutionary history of lifeforms are so excellently preserved, as in the Plattenkalk strata of the Altmühl Valley from Pappenheim to Alzpaint, between Daiting and Hofstetten in the south and Bieswang to the north; with its last arms stretching across Zandt, Breitenhüll and Pointen to Kelheim. The small village of Solnhofen, which has given the stone its name, is the main export centre for lithographic limestone; the most magnificent quarries, in contrast, lie south of that near the small town of Mörnsheim. Here one comes across exposures of limestone strata of 40 metres in height and more. Naturally, the single layers are of varying compositions as clay intervals often occur between the strata of useful stone, that are termed Fäulen or Feilen by the workers. The hard limestone layers themselves differ in thickness (from 1 to 25cm and more), and this is reflected in their names. Thin layers, which are used for roof tiles, are called Zwicklager, Zwicksteine, Dachenschiefer or Weitenhiller by the workers: somewhat stronger paving slabs have led to the place names of Plastersteine or Steinlagen. The thickest strata, or lithographic stone, are termed Flinze. The individual deposits belong to the uppermost White Jurassic, and they have become famous because they contain finely preserved fossils. While the fossils from other geological deposits are extremely poor and usually only partially preserved, the preservation of the Solnhofen Plattenkalk can be excellent, and the shape of the extinct animals can mostly be seen with no further work being necessary. Whoever hears about Solnhofen fossils usually believes that they occur in masses. This is actually in no way the case. Petrifications are comparatively rare but, when they are discovered, they are wonderfully preserved. The richness in genera and species is, in contrast, very great; according to J Walther, about 88 genera and 175 species have been found in this limestone. Interestingly, there are no less than 21 of these tat are known from only one or two specimens. From the paleontological perspective, the Solnhofen Plattenkalk is characterised by: excellently preserved fossils, poverty in terms of individuals, richness of forms.

The Plattenkalk exposures are often in isolated depressions or basins, and are frequently overlying lower strata from the Malm. In what ways die these various deposits form? To the south, in the Upper Jurassic sea, there were many coral islands with reefs in front of them that led to the building of lagoons, the beds of which were covered with lime mud and fine sand. This lime mud arose organically although other chemical processes played significant roles. Neither brackish water or salt water animals could survive in the deepest and muddiest depths of the water filling the lagoons. But, on occasions, especially strong storms could throw water from the Jurassic sea over the reefs into the lagoons, and countless organisms naturally arrived with it, most of which were dead and these immediately sank to the bed of the lagoons, while particularly tough ones (such as Limulus walchi) could survive for a while before perishing. Strong southerly winds also carried material in from the nearby vindelirischen* mainland to the south of the of the reef zone, and this was covered with a rich vegetation (gingko, giant ferns, cypresses) and evidence of a great wealth of insects that served as nourishment for numerous reptiles, and many representatives of the fauna and flora found their ways into the lagoons. (Additional note: * I've checked and rechecked the quaint typeface, and it says vindelirischen. That's odd. It could be a typo or a concept I'm not familiar with. I suspect it's referring to the Vindelizische Schwelle. It was in about the right area during the Lower Jurassic. Anyway, there was some bit of land or other...) The water driven in by storm floods quickly flowed back out through the reefs into the sea, and the lime mud (from coral) mixed with sea water into a porridge-like, thick, tough surround for the killed organisms. A clear layer of water gradually arose above and built a mud bed. Reptiles and the first birds came here from the mainland, and left their footprints in the soft mud of the lagoon. (Additional note: I've not hear of any such fossilized vertebrate footprints from Solnhofen, so that strikes me as odd as well. I've seen some horseshoe crab ones.) Should we judge in terms of the organisms that resided on the Jurassic coasts and in the open sea, then we are dealing here with a genuinely tropical region. Therefore, there would have been no lack of strong downpours to have turned the brackish water of the lagoons almost into fresh water, as still happens in the Jalmit archipelago in the South Sea. This constant change of the salt content and the continual evaporation would have precipitated lime. Above the coral mud was deposited a strata with dust from the mainland Fäule, and over that came a layer of limestone (Plattenkalk). A frequent repetition of these processes meant similar sequences built up on top of one another, and so developed the formation. According to J Walther, "the Plattenkalk district was a large, lifeless area in which the bodies of land and sea animals were so quickly enveloped by a coating of lime mud, that no destructive forces could dissolve the organic integrity of the tissue." Almost no clastic sediments are noticeable in the Plattenkalk strata. The situation is much more that, in the stretch between Kelheim to Nusplingen, the intervals between the coral reefs are filled in with fine lime mud, and the whole coastal area had as good as no flowing fresh water. This much cited lime mud was "certainly, as in the coral seas of the present, an organically produced lime" (Walther). Wilhelm Bölsche has a somewhat different opinion to Walther's. He states in his "Kosmos Wanderungen", that not the sea, but the streams of the nearby mainland carried this fine lime mud into the lagoons, and further assumes that the "flat bay" of the ocean was populated by seaweed and small fish, and also especially characterised by its richness of crustaceans. (Additional note: I don't pretend to understand why Bölsche thought so.) Nevertheless, I would like to favour Walther's explanation, and the excellence and completeness of the fossils shows there was no constant "struggle for existence" reigning in the Solnhofen basins.

If we review the entire inheritance of the Jurassic fauna from the Plattenkalk, then we find that all animal phyla are represented from the protoisten to the vertebrates. Missing from the latter, however, are mammals and also amphibians, no traces of which have so far been discovered. We will now have a parade of the most significant fossils and turn first to the sea fauna.

Illustration 2 shows the most common fossil of the Solnhofen Plattenkalk, Saccocoma. (Additional note: I've just fetched a small piece of stone from the cupboard behind me and am holding it up to the monitor. Unless you can clearly see about a dozen of these things, then your computer must have a fault.) Take it to the doctor's.) This animal was a free-swimming crinoid or sea lily with a round button-like body or kelch. Calcite entered in through the fine pores of the outer skeleton so that today, the innards of the kelch are filled with this mineral. The five arms around the mouth opening are articulated, and armed with a thorn-like extension on the inner side; they fork nearer to each other above the edge of the kelch. It may be assumed that Saccocoma, in its juvenile stage, led a fixed existence on the reefs of the Jurassic sea, and was released during more advanced development to change into a free swimmer. The specimens flung into the lagoons by floods must usually have been dead and sank immediately, then there is only rarely any evidence of movement to be discovered. However, Walther has described tracks found with one. Individual sections of the Plattenkalk are covered with millions of these sea lilies that are called Knöpfe ('buttons') or Seesterli ('sea stars') by the workers, and one also calls the zones populated by Saccocoma Knöpfeton ('button clay'). Often, the five bowl-like segments, from which the button-like body was built, lie separated on the rock plate. The arms are mostly rolled together at their ends or broken off. -Geocoma belongs to the Ophiurida or serpent stars. These are found in all stages of their development, and in all possible places. Its five strong arms are frequently broken but have also often been regenerated.

Worms in the Plattenkalk are represented by annelidans and tube worms. One has often come across Lumbricaria (Ill. 3) but this has frequently been confused with structures resulting from the excrement of annelidans (Zittel), and have been categorised as such. (Additional note: Lumbricaria is an ichnofossil and not a body fossil. It's excrement from various critters including fish and ammonites.) Mostly, the examples of Lambricaria have been filled with fine crystals of calcite.

Of molluscs, the cephalopods ('head footers') are prominently represented by ammonites. Their shells have often been dissolved, and the shape is only weakly preserved by impressions. Still more frequently, aptychus can be found, ie. "shells that could not hold themselves together". these were thought to be bivalves (double-shelled animals) for a long time; however, as the Schloß and Mantellinie are absent, they can in no way be mussels, but would rather belong to the ammonite soft animals, and have been found a number of times in the living chamber of ammonite shells. Most frequently though, the aptychus shells turn up with an ammonite house. This is not difficult to explain. After the death, the soft ammonite animal could easily have fallen from the shell with the aptychus. The house with its air chambers was carried off by the water and sank to the floor at an entirely different place. Most academics think the aptychus is a sealing cover for the house, but some hold it to be a cartilage of the head, a device for chewing or a seal for a runiment gland*. The aptychus shells have a straight, untoothed edge, a rounded, three-sided form, a flatly domed external side and a correspondingly concave inner one that is decorated with concentric stripes. Aptychus laevus, the largest type, has many small pores on the external surface. With A. lamellosus, the outer side has leaf-like layers above one another. Especially characteristic ammonites of the Plattenkalk, which are fairly common, are A. oppelia and A. waapenia (Ill. 4a), and also spiritissimus (Ill. 4b), which has been interpreted as a biblex.
(*Footnote: Rudiment gland = occurs with the females of many squids, and these glands secrete a sticky substance that surrounds and strengthens the eggs. Additional note: It could quite possibly have an entirely different name in English.)

No fewer then 69 species of crustaceans have been found, and these belong to 5 orders. The Horseshoe crab (Limulus walchi) has already been mentioned above. Penaeus meyeri (Ill. 5b) belongs to the decapods, and more precisely to the long-tailed, and is the smallest of the four representatives present. The head, breast and rear body sections are elongated, and covered with a smooth, glossy shell. The front three pairs of feet are armed with small shears. The rear body segment has five pairs of legs and its end has a wide tail fin. There is a ten toothed extension of the forehead equipped with two long antennae. Relatives of this animal are known from the Liassic until the present day. The workers call all these creatures laufende Krebse ('walking crabs'). Comparatively rarely found is aeger (Ill. 6), a Pinaeus that also has a smooth shell, but which is significantly larger. Eryon arctifrons belongs to an extinct group of long-tailed crustaceans. The head-breast segment is wider than long, has serrations around it and deep zig zags at the front. The rear body is divided into 7 segments and comparable in length. The first pair of shears rises above the head-breast segment, and the rear pair of feet are armed with straight nails. Fossil larvae, or Phyllosoma of this and other crustaceans were long believed to be spiders. The Solnhofen term for Eryon is Stockrebs ('stick? crab'), Spinne ('spider') for Phyllosoma. The mot numerous, but unfortunately usually poorly preserved representative of the crustacean world is Mecochirus. Its front pair of feet is strongly elongated and ends with powerfully clawed shears. The head-breast segment runs into a point, and has a distinctly pronounced graining. Characteristic of the external appearance of this animal is the name used for it by workers, Schmorrgackel. (Additional note: Gackel is Franconian dialect for a chicken. Presumably, this translates as something close to 'stewed chicken'.) Eryma (Ill. 5a) is nearly as common. Its first pincers are also strongly developed as are the antennae. The head-breast segment is crowned and, reminiscent of our river crustaceans, the rear body carries a well-pronounced tail fin.

Among vertebrates, the army of the fish is rather richly represented, with the Kugelzähner ('ball teeth' -Semionotiformes) known from Lepidotus notopterus (Ill. 7), the smaller Lepidotus species, the holotype of which can be found in the Munich museum, that some researchers regard as being a juvenile. With the exception of the chisel-shaped teeth on the premaxilla, the teeth are half ball-shaped and often bluntly round. The lepidotes are strongly armoured with angular scales and a long, carp-like body protected by large enamelled scales in rhombus shapes. The largest species, L. maximus, reached a length of almost 2m. Their still extant relatives are found in the rivers of North America. The same waters house a genus of the Kahlfisch (Caturoidea) whose predecessors, Caturus elongatus and C. macrurus, are present in the Plattenkalk, with the first being rather rare and, in contrast, the second common and in all sizes. These last named species had pointed teeth. All the cited fish belong to the ganoids with irregularly sized parts of the tail fin (heterokerken). For the bony fish of the Plattenkalk, which can hardly be distinguished from extant species of today, the tail fin is homokerk (it appears to consist of equally sized parts), the back bone is of bone, the skin is only rarely covered with bone plates but, more usually, with skyloid or stenoid scales. Here can be cited Leptolepis knorri and L. sprattiformis (Additional note: You can see one of those in the cupboard behind me.), slim fish of a sprat- to herring-size which usually followed a social life. L. sprattiformis is extremely common and covers entire slabs. Some workers call the Leptolepis species Goldfischli ('little goldfish' in Franconian dialect).

If we now transfer our attention to the fauna of the mainland, we will soon find that the insects play the most important role. A 2cm long cockroach, Mexoblattina lithophica, is very common, and its proportionately large eyes suggest a nocturnal lifestyle. Probably, this animal lived in masses in the shadowy forests on the coasts of the Jurassic sea. The majority of insects are very poorly preserved, their tough bodies being too unsuitable for fossilisation. The Pseudoneuroptera are strongly represented with 4 species of dragonflies with sharply sectioned bodies that, unfortunately, have mostly lost their feet. The wings, however, are often spread out and the finest veins can be recognised (Ill. 8, Additional note: the article linked below contains a photo of a Solnhofen dragonfly). The dragonflies are called Stangenritter ('poll knights') and Schladenvögel ('?-birds') in the vernacular tongue, and the other insects Wasserläufer ('water runners') or Grashüpfer ('grasshoppers').

Homeosaurus pulchellus (Ill. 9) is a lizard-like reptile characterised as a very primitive creature by amphicoele spine bones (both sides are concave), separated Schläfengruben ('fenestral openings') in the skull, and the presence of stomach ribs. The feet have 5 toes equipped with short nails. On the rear feet, the first 4 toes become larger from inner to outer, and are directed straight ahead, whereas the fifth is significantly smaller and points backwards. The holotype of Homeosaurus is now in Munich. These vaguely crocodile-like creatures are still represented by one living genus. This is up to the 1m long Hatteria punctata, that lives on islands off the northeast coast of New Zealand, but all others are extinct.

Pterosaurs discovered in the Plattenkalk are almost always well preserved, and most specimens belong to otherwise unknown species. The obvious wealth in forms can perhaps by explained by different species living isolated on their own islands in the Jurassic sea. Pterodactylus longirosris (Ill. 10) is also known from a single specimen, and this is on display n the London museum. The flight capacity of this remarkable animal results from the little finger acting as the main support for a flight membrane that extends back to the base of the foot, and this means that the flight membrane has about the same length as the body. This flight mechanism differs from those of either the birds or bats. The beak-like jaws are spread widely apart, and armed with long, pointed teeth. Horny plates of bone provide a protective ring around the eye (skelerotical ring). The head is held at a right angle on the long neck. The sharp claws of the fingers perhaps served as organs for climbing. The first finger of the front foot is reduced. This species reached only about the size of a pigeon but, in the Upper Cretaceous of Kansas, pterosaurs with wingspans of 7.5m have been brought to light. -As is known, two specimens of the ancient predecessor of our birds, Archaeopteryx lithographica (Ill. 11), have been discovered in the Plattenkalk. All animals mentioned are either from the mainland or sea-dwellers while, so far, fresh water dwellers are completely absent in the Plattenkalk.