Pitzengraben – A gem with a lot of history
Pitzengraben story 1: No coals to fetch
Here in the Pitzengraben one again encounters Gosau strata. It is mainly friable, grey sandstone. Only above the entrance to the former small mining gallery does a thin, black layer of coal-bearing clay appear. This was supposed to be extracted there, but with little success. Like all coal, it was formed from the remains of plants. A river washed them into the shallow sea 90 million years ago. The plants did not rot under water. The pressure of the rock layers originally above, the higher temperatures at depth and not least the significant time that has passed since then have subsequently transformed the plants into the coal. However, since a lot of clay was deposited together with the plant remains from the beginning, and the transformation was only slight, the coal here is very low-grade.
Pitzengraben history 2: The shell reef
Further up in the Pitzengraben is a reef that was formed 90 million years ago. It had a wonderful holiday climate, about the same as in Morocco today. For the animals living here at that time, it was the normal habitat. Reefs are always formed in shallow water by attached animals and algae. In the reef, the calcareous shells and skeletons of the organisms are firmly attached to each other. What is special about the reef in front of us is that although corals and algae lived in it, the largest and most abundant animals were the horse-bellied mussels (hippurites). These extraordinary animals, like all shells, had two shells. The one attached to the reef, however, was tubular, while the other was small and flat, similar to a lid. It could be opened and closed by vertical movement. If it was open, the mussel could suck in oxygen- and food-rich water directly. But if the water was contaminated with mud (there were no worse things in those days), the lid was closed and sealed the inside tightly. But it had numerous pores and so the mussel could switch to filtering the water – until better times came.
Pitzengraben story 3: The snail disaster
A collection of snail fossils can also be found in the Pitzengraben. They lived about 90 million years ago. They lived in shallow sea and sand. As soon as shells were exposed by storm waves, drilling sponges fell on them. Most snail shells are totally eaten away and perforated because of this. This type of snail was introduced to science as early as 1832, making it the first fossil known from Gams. It is called Trochactaeon lamarcki and is named after the Frenchman Jean Baptist Lamarck. He was one of the great theorists of heredity. He assumed that new animal and plant species arose through the adaptation of their ancestors to the changed environment. This was in stark contrast to his opponent Charles Darwin, who attributed the changes in the animal and plant world exclusively to genetic changes. The battle of the followers raged for almost a century. Today we know that both men were right. However, each was only partially right, because species are created by selecting the forms that are genetically best suited to their environment.
Pitzengraben history 4: Gams fossil finds
- Megalonoda reussi from Schönleiten in Gams was named in 1860 by Moriz Hörnes, after August Emanuel Reuss. He was one of the most important researchers of the Cretaceous deposits of Central Europe, including the Gams Basin. Moriz Hörnes was a scientist at the k.k. Hofmineraliecabinets, a forerunner of today’s Natural History Museum in Vienna. The original is in the collection of the Federal Geological Institute in Vienna.
- Barroisiceras haberfellneri comes from Radstatt, south of Gams. The ammonite was found by Josef Haberfellner, an official of the Vordernberg wheel works and an avid fossil collector. Franz von Hauer, an internationally recognised expert working at the Geological Survey in Vienna, described the species and named it after Haberfellner. The original is kept at the Geological Survey in Vienna.
- Neocylindrites gosaviensis. This snail species was found by Heinz Kollmann of the Vienna Natural History Museum on a newly built road to the Schönleiten. In 1967 he described it in a scientific paper. Neocylindrites was previously known from France and for the first time this genus was also found in Austria. The new species is called “gosauischer Neocylindrites”. The original specimen is in the Vienna Museum of Natural History.