Locality
30°9´ east longitude, 38°5´ north latitiude   [ map ]

Name
Dinar, Afyon, Turkey, Asien

Geological relevance of location
Nummulites (large foraminifera) from the Lower Tertiary. Nummulites belong to a group of single-celled Protozoa, the foraminifera. Members of this group are normally minute and hardly visible without a microscope. However, there were three periods in the Earth\'s history when this group attained an unusually large size, probably the result of very warm conditions and nutrient-rich sea water. The nummulites are so large that they are popularly known as fossil lentils or money stones (the Latin word nummulus = a small coin). Nummulite-rich rocks were used locally as building stone for the pyramids in Egypt. This particular specimen was collected during geological mapping in 1967. Hundreds of nummulites have been weathered out of marlstone and during the mapping campaign were used by the geologists as play money.

Classification of the earth

Structure	fossils
Age	early Tertiary, about 50 million years old

Donor

Dr. Jens Dieter Becker-Platen,
 Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources/Geological Survey of Lower Saxony,
 Hannover,
 Germany