Galerie Golconda

Impressive block of limestone of an ivory colour, usually called molasse, displaying urchins tripneustes parkinsoni, organised in a superb aggregation. Some specimens can display a remarkable fossilisation of a purplish pink colour. Those urchins have a significant average diameter of 9 cm. Excellent state of preservationProvenance –
Lacoste quarry from Vaucluse (France). 
This plaque has been found not far away from the Chateau of Marquis de Sade and has to be dated from the Burdigalian whose name origins the eponymous site called Burdigala (near Bordeaux), which appeared between 20 and 16 millions years before our era. During the Miocene, while the first anthropoid monkeys will appear, a major geological collapse happened, making possible the seawater to make its way up to the Alpine Tethys Ocean, now called Vallée du Rhône. Some sediment carried some fossils such as urchins and pectens shells among others such as these examples coming from the Lacoste quarry. It is also during this period that the ammonite species became extinct.