The 47th Munich Fossil & Mineral Show
Europe’s biggest and best marketplace and displays.
by Diana Fattori & Nando Musmarra
For 47 years, every last weekend in October, mineral, fossil and jewellery lovers travel to Munich, Germany, where is held one of the two biggest European shows (the other is in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines, France, in June). The show runs for three days, hosting 1000 exhibitors, and it is visited by more than 40,000 people.
Very important European museums (Paris, Vienna, and Munich, just to name a few) and private collectors put on exhibit some of the best mineral and fossil specimens ever seen. I especially loved the Munich Natural History Museum’s exhibit focusing on teeth. Modern and fossil teeth were displayed, and the documentation explained how they are tools by which the animal’s food is made suitable for their stomachs. The exhibit focused on the evolution of precise food-processing mechanisms in mammalian teeth, giving them access to a wide variety of food, and, probably playing a crucial role in mammals’ radiation into a great diversity of types and body sizes.
The exhibit introduced many different kind of teeth: pointed fangs, gripping and cutting teeth, crushing and self-sharpening grinders, and even some catfish teeth that resemble the bristles of toothbrush.
What impressed me most were the teeth of Lobodon carcinophagus, the modern crab-eating seal, which were similar in shape to the teeth of the extinct archaeocete whale, the Mississippi state fossil. Those teeth have a really odd triangular shape, but the Lobodon does not eat crabs but krill, the shrimp-like animals that are also the principal food of baleen whales. The Lobodon takes a mouthful of a shoal of krill, then strains out the water through the notches in its teeth, avoiding having to swallow too much water with its food.
The last Munich Show hosted three very special exhibits: two were focused on Brazil—Arco Iris with precious stones and rare minerals never seen before, and the Santana and Crato formation fossils. The subject of the third exhibit was about crystal treasures from Monte Bianco, the highest European mountain shared between Italy and France.
There were ice sculptures trapping rare minerals. Visitors able to extract the treasures from the ice could keep them. Children really enjoyed the unusual hunt as well as many adults…including myself. I breathed heavily on the ice, trying to melt it and capture the minerals imprisoned inside. I almost froze my right hand trying to defrost the smokey quartz I liked!
Like the Denver Show, also in Munich fossil dealers are concentrated in one big area, so if you are like me and not interested in jewellery and new age stuff, you don’t need to waste your time walking around looking for your favourite items. Because Germany is in the middle of Europe, the show hosts many dealers from eastern and western European countries that usually don’t attend any of the big American shows. Amber dealers are very common, and prices are very reasonable. Also if the show is very big, many dealers are amateurs and not professional, so they often offer uncommon fossils that rarely hit the big market.
During the last show, a lot of unusual marine fossil creatures swam in the Munich Merchandise Mart; they came from different locations and geologic periods: from the German Holzmaden Formation (Lower Jurassic), the Solnhofen Limestone (Upper Jurassic), unknown locations from Morocco (Jurassic), from Madagascar (Cretaceous). There were at least ten enormous fishes from different dealers, a very expensive fossils rarely offered for sale!).
Fossil fishes are not common, but are a lucky find. Unlike shells and shark teeth, fishes have little ossification, so decompositions happens very fast: dead organism fall on the sea floor and it usually leave no trace. In addition, decomposition produces carbonic gas and sulphuric hydrogen inside the animal’s body, so the animal rises up to the surface and decomposes faster. In every fossil deposit scientists recognize one common cause: the absence of oxygen, recognizable by bitumen or sulphuric iron, plus the presence of fine sediments and quiet water. All those conditions usually happen in closed areas, like tropical lakes and lagoons. In the last Munich Show, the biggest group of those survivors came from the Lower Cretaceous Santana and Crato formations in Brazil, and that was the subject of the most interesting special exhibit.
Those fossils occur in shales and large rounded limestone concretions from the Araripe Plateau, a region known for almost 160 years for its beautiful fossils. The exhibition also celebrated a longterm relationship between Brazilian fossils and Germany: it was the king of Bavaria himself who arranged an expedition to Brazil for two members of the Munich Academy of Science and an Austrian delegation of philosophers and natural historians early in the nineteenth century.
The two Bavarian naturalists were zoologist Johann Baptist Spix and botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp Martius. They undertook the expedition from 1817 to 1820. At that time, Brazil was a country totally unexplored. In 1819 they reached the Permabuco province and discovered the fossil site in what is called the Santana Formation. The trip was an ocean voyage accompanied by privation, danger, and hardship. Just the second night of their trip, the cold north wind from the Adriatic Sea called “Bora” struck their ship Austria with such force that it was almost shipwrecked. Anyway, three months later they reached Rio de Janeiro and the exploration started. It lasted over three years into the wild and unexplored Brazilian interior.
To commemorate the scientific journey, people from the Munich Show did a very good fossil job of re-creating the fossil lagoon including running water and living tropical fishes. Visitors were able to walk on the water where real fishes swam and fossil fishes were on display. The Santana and Crato formations also preserved many species of plants, enormous flying reptiles, turtles, rays, and insects, especially spiders… if you suffer from arachnophobia it is better you don’t look at them…the preservation is so perfect, it really seems to be in front of living insects! All those fossils were exhibited in a real garden with living plant survivors from the past, like cycads and ferns.
If any of you are planning a trip to Germany, mark your calendar: in 2012 the Munich show will be from October 26th to 28th. Right now the special exhibits subjects are still a secret, but as every year, I bet they will be worth the trip!