When Germany sank into the sea 258 million years ago
Time travel into the past - lecture on 15 January, 6.30 pm at TIETZ
On Wednesday, 15 January at 6.30 pm, the Museum of Natural History and the Friends of the Museum of Natural History Chemnitz e. V. invite you to a special journey back in time in the event hall on the 3rd floor of the TIETZ. Admission is free.
Just as geologists and palaeontologists read the rock strata and their fossils like an archive, a world 258 million years ago will be brought back to life. The lecture vividly shows how tsunami floods once reached the area around Hanover and Schwerin, how a desert region sank into the sea and how a unique barrier reef was created off the coast.
Large parts of the continents have been flooded by the sea again and again in the history of the earth - in the area of today's Germany most recently around 3 million years ago. However, these were comparatively slow sea advances. The latest studies on the sea collapse at the end of the Permian period, around 258 million years ago, show that the so-called Zechstein Flood was almost catastrophically rapid. The tectonic structures of the Earth's crust, which is constantly in motion, reveal where such a flood can be expected in the future. Here we can be curious.
In addition to the potash and rock salts and gypsum deposits still utilised today, the Zechstein Sea covering large parts of Europe left behind the copper shale. For at least 800 years, this has contributed to the economic and cultural boom, particularly in central Germany. The copper slate mining areas around the Harz Mountains and the Thuringian Forest are classic. Mining and the attractive fossils, e.g. the "Kupferschiefer-Heringe", have made these regions the birthplaces of modern geosciences.
The speaker, Prof. Dr Jörg W. Schneider, is Professor Emeritus of Palaeontology at the world's oldest mining university, the TU Bergakademie Freiberg. But he is by no means thinking of retirement. As a passionate geoscientist, he stands for international exchange, science communication and networking like no other. In his work since 1992, J. Schneider has succeeded in acquiring more than 25 projects from the German Research Foundation, the DAAD, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and international research funding organisations, as well as training numerous young scientists. Since 2015, he has also been a professor at Kazan Federal University, where he initiated a Master's double degree programme between Freiberg and Kazan.