Forgotten since a Quarter-Millennium: The Lange Encrinite from the Muschelkalk of the Querfurt Depression (Saxony-Anhalt) - Syntype of Encrinus liliiformis Lamarck, 1801

The so-called Lange Encrinite, designated as one of two syntypes of Encrinus liliiformis Lamarck, 1801, was regarded as missing or forgotten since the late 1760s. Only recently the specimen was identified as one of Lamarck's syn-types in the collections of the Bergakademie Freiberg (Saxony). The intricate history of finding, ownership, and research of this iconic crinoid leads to the ideas and thoughts in the time of Enlightenment in Central Germany. According to contem-porary witnesses the crinoid was found near Schraplau or Farnst'dt respectively (Querfurt Depression, Saxony-Anhalt, Central Germany) about 1740 and was obtained by the Halle professor J. J. Lange. In 1755 it was published by G. W. Knorr in Nuremberg in a large-size copper engraving. As early as in the 1770s the Jena professor and expert in fossils J. E. I. Walch was unable to localise the crinoid despite all his enquiries. Lange had already sold the specimen to the Saxony Ober-berghauptmann (chief mining director) Baron von Gartenberg. Afterwards, the Muschelkalk slab probably came from his possession into the local collections shortly before the foundation of the Bergakademie Freiberg (Saxony) in 1765. Several individuals of the brachiopod Tetractinella trigonella on the bedding plane allow to unequivocally assign the finding horizon to the Tetractinella Bed close to the base of the Trochitenkalk Formation. The syntype first mentioned by Lamarck from the Trochitenkalk of the Asse Hill (Lower Saxony) was already described and figured as Fig. 1 on Plate 1 by M. R. Rosinus (1719). This specimen was probably obtained with the collection of von Schlotheim in 1833 by the Berlin Natural History Museum but could not yet be located. However, the crown on his Plate 1, Fig. 2, from the same locality that also belonged to Rosinus's collection is still preserved in the Berlin collection (Quenstedt-Katalog E. 4.).