Öhningen

Öhningen

Coat of arms
Öhningen

Coordinates: 47°39′41″N 8°53′19″E / 47.66139°N 8.88861°E / 47.66139; 8.88861Coordinates: 47°39′41″N 8°53′19″E / 47.66139°N 8.88861°E / 47.66139; 8.88861
Country Germany
State Baden-Württemberg
Admin. region Freiburg
District Konstanz
Government
  Mayor Andreas Schmid
Area
  Total 28.20 km2 (10.89 sq mi)
Population (2013-12-31)[1]
  Total 3,581
  Density 130/km2 (330/sq mi)
Time zone CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
Postal codes 78337
Dialling codes 07735
Vehicle registration KN
Website www.oehningen.de

Öhningen is a town on the western edge of Lake Constance where it forms the border between Switzerland and the district of Konstanz (or Constance) in Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

World heritage site

It is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps UNESCO World Heritage Site.[2]

Palaeontology

The discovery of the fossil Andrias scheuchzeri in 1726 by the Zurich city physician Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in Öhningen (Dutch: Oeningen) placed this town firmly in the history annals of palaeontology because Scheuchzer interpreted his find as the skeletal remains of a child who suffered the biblical deluge, and which he referred to as Homo diluvii. Later in the 1770s it was determined to be a fossilized lizard and it was finally identified as the giant salamander in 1811 by George Cuvier after he hacked gently away at the specimen to reveal the limbs. The site at Öhningen has also yielded a rich material of other fossils including many Miocene insects, of which the pioneer student was Oswald Heer.

Twin towns

Öhningen is twinned with:

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Sunday, September 27, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.