the middle of a forest about 20 minutes from the city of Darmstadt in central Germany is a decommissioned strip mine half a mile wide. Today scrubby bushes cover the bottom, where dirt paths wind past rainwater ponds filled with bright-green algae. A gaping 200-foot-deep gouge in the forested countryside, the Messel Pit doesn’t at first glance seem worth preserving, never mind visiting, but since 1995 it has been a Unesco World Heritage site, thanks to a series of unfortunate events beginning some 48 million years ago
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/evolutionary-secrets-within-messel-pit-180948004/#lBSF2RdV7pJxHL6S.99
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