Return To the Fossils of the Vatican

Last month, I returned to  St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City near Rome, Italy. On September 3, 2019 I posted a blog entry about finding ammonite fossils in some of the floor slabs on a visit there. This building material is a iron enriched (red) limestone also known as Red Verona marble or Rosso Verona marble used in a lot of churches including this one. I now know to look for fossils when I see the reddish-pink stone in floors. The material dates to the Upper Jurassic Period of the Rosso Ammonitico Formation, Oxfordian Stage, Verona Province, Venetia Region of Italy.

 

On this visit, I investigated some of the slabs in more obscure locations like the corners along walls and found some very nicely preserved ammonoid fossils. It appears the stone mason might have intentional put some of these slabs with fossils there and they have held up well since people are not walking on that surface.

Fossils at Neuschwanstein Castle

Neuschwanstein castle is an iconic building that is one of the most visited tourist spots in Germany. It is located in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany near the Austrian border. King Ludwig II began building the castle in 1869 and was still not completed by the time of his death in 1886.

I don't think the stone these fossils were found in was original the when the castle was being built in the 1800s. They are in the floor tile of a hallway that leads out the gift shop to where the restrooms are and then a door way going to some stairs which lead to the lower levels of the castle where the kitchens were.

The fossils are to ammonids probably from the Jurassic or Cretaceous Periods.

Fluorescent Opal Belemnite Fossil

This opal fossil is UV fluorescent. The original aragonite internal shell dissolved and was replaced by opal in this belemnite fossil. It existed in the Cretaceous Period. Fossil was probably found in Coober Pedy, Australia. Specimen was on display at the la Specola Museo Di Zoologia Ceropastica e Mineralogia (Florence, Italy) (August 2024).