Fossils Bilzingsleben

For almost 200 years, the ‘Steinrinne’ travertine quarry near Bilzingsleben (Northern Thuringia, Germany) has been a well-known site for Pleistocene fossils. The site was excavated for three decades by Professor Dr. Dietrich Mania. The extensive material (several tons of animal bones, rocks and plant imprints in rock travertine) turned the Steinrinne into one of Europe’s most important reference sites for palaeontology and climate stratigraphy of a Pleistocene interglacial period (c. 400,000 to 350,000 years ago). The quarry also revealed a number of bones considered the oldest human fossils in Central Germany.

The collection belongs to the state of Thuringia. It contains Mania’s assemblage excavated between 1990 and 2002 and the assemblage excavated from 2004 to 2007. These are used for research at the University of Jena and is open for future research in archaeology and paleontology.