Teaching Bromacker: Using research at a world-class fossil site as outdoor classroom

The involvement of the Paleontology and “Soft-Rock” groups at the Geosciences Department in the Bromacker project provided not only an excellent opportunity to conduct research but also to prominently incorporate the topic into the departmental teaching and training mandate. The perimontane Early Permian Tambach basin in the Thuringian Forest region, hosting the Bromacker site, offered numerous advantageous features: It could be reached from Jena within an hour’s driving time; had easy access by forest roads and trails; provided quarries, numerous good outcrops, several research drill cores, an active excavation site, and a museum; could be meaningfully visualized from the thin-section- to the drone imagery-scale; had no restrictions on sampling; offered diverse geoscience topics (vertebrate, invertebrate, and trace fossil paleontology, volcanology, tectonics, geophysics, sedimentology and stratigraphy, sedimentary petrography) at various levels; and was firmly embedded within established geotourism infrastructure and ecotourism public-outreach activities. The Jena subproject was led by four FSU faculty, one postdoc, and one PhD-student of complementary expertise, all with teaching interest and prior regional and thematic experience. Our investigations combined the Tambach Basin trace fossil and invertebrate inventory with its re-studied tectonic and sedimentary record into an integrated paleoenvironmental assessment that clarified the setting of the Bromacker fossil site with respect to paleogeography, hydrology, climate, vegetation, pedology, and weathering regime. Extensive classroom teaching, lab exercises, and field trips were accompanied by ca. 21 semester projects, B.Sc.- and M.Sc.-theses and a Ph.D.-dissertation. Many teaching activities extended beyond the academic realm to special-interest groups and the general public.