Talk:Messel pit

1973 oil crisis
The pit first became known for its wealth of fossils around 1900, but serious scientific excavation only started around the 1970s, when falling oil prices made the quarry uneconomical.

If I understand the economics' history correctly, there should be written rising oil prices instead of what is. --Ерден Карсыбеков (talk) 18:23, 9 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Rising oil prices would have kept it going. This must be related to the subsequent fall in prices after the peak. Petter Bøckman (talk) 23:49, 9 July 2010 (UTC)

Limnic Eruption
The wiki page on Limnic Eruption states that Messel pit has fossils because of the Eruption? Can we have any mentions on that here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.25.194.114 (talk) 03:00, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

not volcanic gas
The absence of specimen rich layers (i.e., "kill layer") casts doubt on the toxic gas hypothesis. Instead, the fossils seem to be uniformly dispersed through the Messel Shale suggesting non-catastrophic (attritional) mortality. This is discussed in several chapters in Smith, K.T., Schaal, S.F. and Habersetzer, J. (editors), 2019. MESSEL-An Ancient Greenhouse Ecosystem. Senckenberg Bücher, Nr. 80 144.39.6.17 (talk) 22:18, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Translation of a portion of the German Grube Messel article
Within the section Messel formation on Wikiversity are translations from the existing German Wikipedia articles at de:Grube Messel and de:Molasse. If these are of interest feel free to review and critique as well as include here. If anyone wishes more extensive translation of additional parts of these articles, please feel free to let me know. --Marshallsumter (talk) 06:33, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to merge Messel Formation with Messel pit
The page for the formation itself is rather scant, and most of the information on this page such as lithology and paleobiota would probably belong on there better. However, that would leave behind just a relatively small page about the pit itself. The Messel pit is not like other fossil sites such as Fossil Butte, where the famous site is just one locality for a much wider formation (e.g. Green River Formation), since I'm pretty sure that everything we know about the formation comes from this one locality alone. For this reason, I propose either merging the formation's article into the pit's article, or vice versa with the history of the pit being a section on the Messel Formation's article. Geekgecko (talk) 00:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
 * No "discussion" was had to this point, so I've undone the misleading/inapplicable close. That being said, I agree that a merge would seem sensible (formation merged to site article), and that I wouldn't object to it going ahead in absence of arguments to the contrary. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:35, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:MERGECLOSE states Any user, including the user who first proposed the merge, may close the discussion and move forward with the merge if enough time (normally one week or more) has elapsed and there has been no discussion or if there is unanimous consent to merge. I simply closed the discussion as there had not been a discussion since the proposal was posted over 20 days ago. (Discuss 0nshore's contributions!!!) 00:52, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Feel free to close, but do not state "the result of the discussion was", as at that point you are implementing the equivalent of a "soft delete" (see WP:ACD) - a default outcome in case nobody else chimes in. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 07:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, if I can do it without there needing to be a big discussion, I'll probably do it soon. However, I'll probably have the Messel Formation page be the main page, with the Messel Pit site as a subheading within the formation. There is precedence for this with the page for the Florissant Formation, where the main page is for the formation itself, with the US national monument as a subheading within it. Geekgecko (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2024 (UTC)