It looked easy enough to try to fit in both Lorsch and Messel Pit in a day and still leave time to drive on. They are only around 40kms apart by road but, as often happened in Germany, the logistics of fitting in with the “Tour Group” schedule made things a bit more difficult. The 2 hour tour at Messel only takes place on Mon, Fri, Sat and Sun in the late afternoon (each day at different times!!) whilst the 1 hour tour is daily at 12.30 and 15.30 with extra ones at weekends. We were there on a Tuesday so that put paid to a 2 hour tour and the 1 hour 15.30 tour was a bit late for us. Unfortunately the first Lorsch tour only started at 11.00 making a drive to Messel afterwards for a 12.30 tour a bit problematical. We were helped at Lorsch by a very kind guide giving us a personal tour starting at 10.10 – so we were on our way to Messel by 11 am arriving at 11.45 and able to book a place on the 12.30 tour. A “combi” ticket for the visitor Centre and 1 hr tour was 14 euro pp or 11 for us “oldies”! (or an expensive 10 or 8 for the Visitor Centre alone – it wasn’t entirely clear if you could take the Pit visit (7 Euro with no reductions) without the Visitor Centre but as the “Museum” part of the Visitor Centre had a separate “ticket showing” barrier I would guess that you could)

A comment about the Darmstadt Museum – we looked into visiting it, but, in common with so many sites in Germany, it was being re-furbished and was closed (Sep 2013)! There is however a museum (free entry!) in the village about 3kms north of the Pit if you want to see more after the museum at the visitor centre http://www.messelmuseum.de/index_museum.html.

We fitted in a quick look round the Visitor Centre Museum which had a surprising “Disneyworld” type “ride” deep into the Earth (see later!) before we joined around 30 people on the tour. This started with a 10-15 minute talk (in German) just outside the door of the museum telling us what the museum already said and also that there wasn’t enough time on a 1hr tour to go right into the Pit! We eventually made it past the locked gates into the pit (with another few minutes talk in front of them!) and stopped at 2 more locations for further explanations – the first not really much further in to the Pit at all and the second to look at a pile of shale and smell the oil (originally the Pit was mined for oil shale). Further in the distance we could see a couple of awnings with researchers working on the deposits and were then taken further down to see them with the warning that we couldn’t spend long there – so, whether such a visit is normal on the 1hr tour, I don’t know (or even if the researchers are there every day). For us this was undoubtedly the highlight of the tour. The beds they were cutting into were clearly visible (photo 1) and it was interesting to see the researchers using knives to split the rock into thin slices and looking for fossils (Photo 2). We didn’t see them discover an “Ida” (Messel’s iconic fossilized pearly primate discovery – Darwinius Masillae) but there were little beetles and plant remains being found and being carefully trimmed and put to one side in water to preserve them. Next we were taken to a small cabin and were shown something of the process of preservation and casting which the fossils undergo. The fossils degrade very quickly once exposed and have to be stabilized quickly by a resin cast which incorporates the original on one side which is then painstakingly exposed by removing the remaining rock. See here if you are interested - http://www.paleodirect.com/pgset2/fakemesselfossils1.htm.

Back in the museum we had a second “ride”! This consists of a small circular room with a 360 degree wall projection simulating a “ride” as in a descending elevator on a drill bit deep into the rock to extract a “core” which is on display outside –with explanations at each level. The museum had a fair number of fossils on display and, if they might not have been as comprehensive as those in the Darmstsadt museum, we were reasonably satisfied – those showing the process of evolution across one family of fishes to exploit varying niches, were particularly noteworthy.

So – all in all an interesting trip. But the pricey tour could be a bit tame if you only went as far as the oil shale part – but that's all it really promises - “Berühren Sie den Ölschiefer und versetzen Sie sich zurück beim Anblick der Fossilien in die lang vergangene Zeit des Eozäns, die Zeit der Morgenröte.”