Fossils - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1978 - 80 Pfennig

The series »Archaeological Cultural Property« is followed by the special postage stamp issue »Fossils«. The oil shales of the former open pit Grobe Messel near Darmstadt contain fossils of unique conservation. The depicted bat comes from excavations carried out by the Frankfurt Research Institute and Senckenberg Nature Museum since 1975 in Messel, and is about 50 million years old. Together with some finds from North America, the Messel bats are among the earliest phylogenetic documents of this mammalian order ever discovered in the world. While fossil mammals are usually transmitted only in the form of individual teeth or jaw fragments, complete skeletons appear in Messel, sometimes literally with skin and hair. For example, the depicted specimen shows soft body conservation in the trunk area. The importance of such an outstanding tradition becomes clear when one realizes that bats with their flying habits are among the most extreme specializations that have developed in the history of the mammals. One would therefore assume that such extreme specializations would have arisen only in the recent past. The excellent documentation in the case of Messel, on the other hand, shows that the bats, apart from their more primitive proportions 50 million years ago, were in principle already fully developed.