The Messel Pit is a Konservat-Lagerstätte in Germany, representing the deposits of a latest early to earliest middle Eocene maar lake, and one of the first palaeontological sites to be included on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One aspect of Messel that makes it so extraordinary is that its sediments are rich in different fossilised organisms – microfossils, plants, fungi, invertebrate animals and vertebrates – that...

These are the first and so far only records of a sailfin velifer fish from the Lower Oligocene of the Unterfeld (“Frauenweiler”) clay pit at Rauenberg (S Germany), and only the fourth fossil skeletal finds of this group worldwide. The new genus and species † Oechsleria unterfeldensis is described in detail, diagnosed, and compared to other fossil and extant representatives of the Veliferidae. It appears to be a comparatively s...