Maxberg specimen

Main article: Archaeopteryx

The Maxberg specimen (German: Maxberg-Exemplar) is a fossil of the prehistoric bird Archaeopteryx, discovered in 1956 in Germany.[1] It takes its name from the Maxberg Museum, where it was exhibited for a number of years.[2]

The Archaeopteryx specimen is, as of 2011, one of only ten body fossils ever found,[3] but has been missing since the death of its last known owner, Eduard Opitsch, in 1991.[1] It is conventionally referred to as the third specimen.

History

Discovery and the first owner

Cast of the main plate of the Maxberg specimen

The Maxberg specimen was discovered in 1956 by two workers, Ernst Fleisch and Karl Hinterholzinger, in a quarry between Solnhofen and Langenaltheim, Bavaria, eight decades after the previous discovery in 1874/1875, the Berlin specimen.[4] The workers however did not recognise the significance of the find, mistaking it for an unimportant crayfish, Mecochirus longimanatus, and the pieces remained stored in a hut for the following two years.[1]

In 1958, Eduard Opitsch, owner of the quarry, allowed the fossil to be taken away by visiting geologist Klaus Fesefeldt who believed it was some vertebrate and sent it to the University of Erlangen where paleontologist Professor Florian Heller identified it correctly and further prepared it.[5] Opitsch, described by contemporaries as having had a difficult personality, attempted to sell the specimen to the highest bidder remarking: "if such things are found only once every hundred years, nothing will be given away for free". The Freie Universität Berlin offered 30,000 Deutschmark; in response the Bavarian institutions tried to preserve the specimen for their own Bundesland by outbidding them. In negotiations with Princess Therese zu Oettingen-Spielberg of the Bayerische Staatssamlung für Paläontologie und Geologie Opitsch, though never demanding an exact amount, had already vaguely indicated a price of about 40,000 DM. The BSP was willing to pay this but hesitant to compensate for the fact that any sum would be taxed at 40% as company profits. The tax collectors did not allow an exemption to be made for this special case. As a result an irritated Opitsch in August 1965 suddenly broke off negotiations and declined all further offers.[1]

Display and withdrawal

For a number of years, the find was displayed at the local Maxberg Museum. In 1974 Opitsch allowed high-quality casts to be made on the occasion of an exhibition by the Senckenberg Museum dedicated to Archaeopteryx, but immediately afterwards he removed it from public display altogether. Instead, he stored it in his private residence in near-by Pappenheim declining access to the specimen to all scientists.[1] He rejected a proposal to further prepare the slabs.

Opitsch had become more defensive about the fossil after an announcement of another specimen in 1973. This was the Eichstätt specimen, which was much more complete and also transpired to have already been discovered in 1951, five years before the Maxberg. He felt that the large attention for this new specimen was intended to deprecate his own. Attempts were made to gain permission to show the specimen in exhibitions, but Opitsch always refused the requests.[2] In 1984 Peter Wellnhofer, a renowned expert on Archaeopteryx, attempted to gather together all specimens and experts on the subject in Eichstätt but Opitsch ignored his request and the conference proceeded without the Maxberg specimen[6] — the London and Berlin specimens however were absent too, the former because seen as too valuable by the British Museum of Natural History, the latter as it was about to be displayed in a surprise exhibition in Tokyo, together with a visit of the Berlin Brachiosaurus to Japan.

Disappearance

When Eduard Opitsch died in February 1991, the Maxberg specimen was not found in his house by his only heir, a nephew entering the building a few weeks after the death of his uncle who was the sole inhabitant.[7] Witnesses claim to have seen the specimen stored under his bed shortly before he died. Opitsch's marble headstone at the cemetery of Langenaltheim depicts a gilded engraving modelled after the specimen, which led to the rumour that he had taken it to his grave.[1] Another theory is that the specimen was sold secretly.[8] The case of the lost specimen was even investigated by the Bavarian police after the heir reported it stolen in July 1991, but no further evidence of its whereabouts was found.[2] Raimund Albersdörfer, a German fossil dealer who was involved in the 2009 purchase of the long-missing Daiting Specimen, believes, as do others, that the specimen is not lost but rather in private possession and will resurface eventually.[1] As a result of all this the specimen has no official inventory number.

The disappearance of the Maxberg specimen has led to renewed calls to protect fossil finds by law. The laws in this regard would be a matter of the federal states in Germany. Bavaria, to this date, is the only Bundesland having no laws protecting such finds.[1] However, the federal government has declared the Maxberg specimen a national cultural heritage, national wertvolles Kulturgut, in 1995, meaning it cannot be exported without permission.

In 2009, the value of a high-quality Archaeopteryx specimen was estimated to be in excess of three million Euro.[1]

Specimen

The Maxberg specimen, like all Archaeopteryx exemplars except the so-called "Daiting", shows body feathers.[9] The specimen was formally described in 1959 by Florian Heller.[4] Heller had roentgen and UV-pictures made by the photographic institute of Wilhelm Stürmer.[10] The specimen consists of a slab and counterslab, mainly showing a torso with some feather impressions, lacking both head and tail.[11] The roentgen pictures proved that parts of the skeleton still remained hidden inside the stone.[12] The fossil was studied for a time by researchers before Opitsch removed it from public exhibition, among them John Ostrom.[13]

It was determined by a geologist that the quarry that produced the Maxberg specimen had also produced the London specimen, which was found almost one hundred years earlier, in 1861. However, the Maxberg example was found almost seven metres lower than the London one.[11]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Archaeopteryx.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sammler und Forscher - ein schwieriges Verhältnis (German) Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Collectors and scientists, a difficult relationship, published: 25 October 2009, accessed: 1 March 2011
  2. 1 2 3 Archaeopteryx (German) www.fossilien-solnhofen.de, accessed: 1 March 2011
  3. ↑ Stelldichein der Urvögel (German) Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Meeting of the Urvogel, published: 25 October 2009, accessed: 1 March 2011
  4. 1 2 Dingus, Rowe, 119
  5. ↑ Heller, F., 1960, "Der dritte Archaeopteryx-Fund aus den Solnhofener Plattenkalken des oberen Malm Frankens." Journal für Ornithologie 101: 7-28
  6. ↑ Dingus, Rowe, 121
  7. ↑ Abbott, A., 1992, "Archaeopteryx fossil disappears from private collection", Nature, 357: 6
  8. ↑ All About Archaeopteryx talk.origins, accessed: 1 March 2011
  9. ↑ Four-winged birds may have been first fliers New Scientist, published: 23 May 2004, accessed: 1 March 2011
  10. ↑ Heller, F., 1959, "Ein dritter Archaeopteryx-Fund aus den Solnhofener Plattenkalken von Longenaltheim/Mfr.", Erlanger Geologische Abhandlungen 31: 1–25
  11. 1 2 Archaeopteryx www.stonecompany.com, accessed: 1 March 2011
  12. ↑ Heller, F. & Stürmer, W., 1960, "Der Dritte Archaeopteryx-Fund", Natur und Volk 90(5): 137-145
  13. ↑ Dingus, Rowe, 120

Further reading

Dingus, L., Rowe, T. (1997) The mistaken extinction,W.H. Freeman and Company, New York, ISBN 0-7167-2944-X

External links

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