Lagerstätte:
A Lagerstätte (German: [ˈlaːɡɐˌʃtɛtə], from Lager ‘storage, lair’ Stätte ‘place’; plural Lagerstätten) is a sedimentary deposit that exhibits extraordinary fossils with exceptional preservation—sometimes including preserved soft tissues. These formations may have resulted from carcass burial in an anoxic environment with minimal bacteria, thus delaying decomposition. Lagerstättenspan geological time from the Neoproterozoic era to the present. Worldwide, some of the best examples of near-perfect fossilization are the Cambrian Maotianshan shales and Burgess Shale, the Devonian Hunsrück Slates and Gogo Formation, the Carboniferous Mazon Creek, the Jurassic Solnhofen limestone, the Cretaceous Santana and Yixian formations, and the Eocene Green River Formation. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “Daily Kos Science: A discovery in China could add extraordinary details to the history of life,” Mark Sumner, The Daily Kos:
Lagerstätte may not be a word that many people run into in their daily lives, but for geologists it’s an extremely exciting term. A lagerstätte is an area were rocks have preserved evidence of ancient life—with extraordinary fidelity and in great numbers. Unlike most fossils, which are generally only reflect bones and shells—the ‘hard parts’ of vanished organisms—the remains found at a lagerstätte may include the delicate sweep of a brush-stroke-thin antenna, dangling representations of a jellyfish’s tendrils, even the internal organs of tiny creatures.
