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About Solnhofen:
Organisms only fossilize under a unique (and rare) set of conditions--which is why we only have fossil evidence of a vanishingly small fraction of the earth's life forms. Solnhofen, in Germany, meets all the requirements: 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period, this area was a placid lagoon, the salt content of which was just high enough to inhibit colonization by bacteria, plankton, or fish. For this reason, animals that drowned in the lagoon (or were washed in from elsewhere) did not decompose rapidly, and were gently preserved in the soft limestone mud.
Solnhofen has been especially kind to the preservation of avian reptiles, most notably Archaeopteryx (considered by some paleontologists to be the first creature that was more bird than dinosaur) and various pterosaurs including Pterodactylus, Rhamphorhynchus and Anurognathus. To date, ten complete or near-complete skeletons of Archaeopteryx have been discovered at Solnhofen, and they're some of the most beautiful (and unsettling) fossils ever to be unearthed. (In fact, these slabs are such prized artifacts that a couple have disappeared over the last few decades, stolen or bought on the sly by unscrupulous collectors!)
