Friedrich von Huene’s Megalosaurid Vertebra from the Lower Jurassic of Northern Germany
In the 1960s, renowned Tübingen-based palaeontologist Friedrich von Huene was given the opportunity to study an incomplete vertebra from the Lower Jurassic (Toarcian) of northern Germany. The specimen had been found in the gravel pit Forst Hagen in Ahrensburg near Hamburg.
The vertebra was sent to von Huene by Ulrich Lehmann, a palaeontologist at the University of Hamburg who had published extensively on Ahrensburg fossils, particularly on ammonites. In 1966, von Huene published a brief, two-page paper describing the specimen, concluding that it likely represents a megalosaurid vertebra, closely resembling a dorsal vertebra of Megalosaurus bucklandii.
Like other fossils from the so-called Ahrensburger Geschiebesippe, this vertebra is part of a Glacial Erratics Assemblage. These Jurassic erratics were transported by glaciers from their original location that was most likely in the southwestern Baltic Sea, either south of the Danish Archipelago or southwest to south of the island of Bornholm (Sweden). This conclusion was reached by my co-author Jahn Hornung, who conducted an in-depth investigation into the provenance of the assemblage during our study describing plesiosaur elements from Ahrensburg (Sachs et al., 2016).
At the time of publication, von Huene was 91 years old and this paper was one of his last scientific contributions. Since then, the vertebra has never been studied in detail. It was only briefly mentioned in later works on Ahrensburg fossils, such as Lehmann (1971) and Lierl (1999). It was also illustrated in the exhibition booklet Die Dinosaurier der Schweiz und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [The Dinosaurs of Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany], published for a special exhibit at the Bodensee-Naturmuseum in Konstanz (Jaeger 1986). A photo of the vertebra also appears in Dinosaurier in Deutschland [Dinosaurs in Germany] by Probst & Windolf (1993), provided by the University of Hamburg.
Based on these references, I had assumed the specimen was housed at the Geological-Palaeontological Institute in Hamburg. However, there was no record of it in the collections. To my surprise, I encountered the vertebra in 2022 during a casual visit to the Eiszeitmuseum in Lütjenburg. According to its display label, the specimen is on loan from Roland Vinx, a geologist who worked at the University of Hamburg and served as director of the Mineralogical-Petrographical Institute until his retirement in 2010.
Given the timeline, it seems plausible that Vinx discovered the specimen himself as a student. He was in his early 20s in 1966, the year von Huene published his description. Several other Ahrensburg fossils from Vinx’s collection are also on display at the Eiszeitmuseum.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared to study the vertebra during my visit, so I could only take a few overview photos, which I will share here. According to von Huene’s original description, the specimen measures approximately 8 cm in both width and length, though it is incomplete.
References
Jäger, M. (1986) Die Dinosaurier der Schweiz und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Seekreis-Verlag, Konstanz.
Lehmann, U. (1971) Faziesanalyse der Ahrensburger Liasknollen auf Grund ihrer Wirbeltierreste. Mitteilungen aus dem Geologischen Institut der Technischen
Universität Hannover, 10, 21-42.
Lierl, H.-J. (1990) Die Ahrensburger Geschiebesippe. Fossilien, 7, 256-267.
Probst, E. & Windolf, R. (1993) Dinosaurier in Deutschland. Bertelsmann, München
Sachs, S., Hornung, J. J. & Kear, B.P. (2016) Plesiosaurian fossils from Baltic glacial erratics: evidence of Early Jurassic marine amniotes from the southwestern margin of Fennoscandia. In: Kear, B.P., Lindgren, J., Hurum, J.H., Milán, J. & Vajda, V. (eds.) Mesozoic biotas of Scandinavia and its Arctic territories. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 434: 149-163.
Von Huene, F. (1966) Ein Megalosauriden-Wirbel des Lias aus norddeutschem Geschiebe. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie, Monatshefte, 318–319.