It was at the Oeningen quarries, in the eighteenth century,

that a wonderful vertebrate fossil, some four feet long, was
discovered
It was at the Oeningen quarries, in the eighteenth century,
that a wonderful vertebrate fossil, some four feet long, was
discovered. A writer of that period, Scheuchzer, announced it
as Homo diluvii testis, a man witness of the deluge! Cuvier
knew better, and was able to demonstrate its relationship to
the giant salamanders of Eastern Asia and North America. It
forms, in fact, a distinct genus of Cryptobranchidae, which
Tschudi, apparently mindful of the early error, named Andrias;
though the proper name of the animal appears to be
Proteocordylus scheuchzeri (Holl.). The stone at Wangen was
used for building purposes, and at one time there were three or
four quarries actively worked. In earlier times the larger
fossils naturally attracted most attention, fishes, snakes,
turtles, fresh-water clams and a variety of leaves and fruits.
Such specimens were saved, and were sold and distributed to
many museums. The supply was good, yet at times not sufficient
for the market; so the monks at Oeningen, and others, would
carve artificial fossils out of the soft rock, coating them
with a brown stain prepared from unripe walnut shells. In later
years, during the middle part of the nineteenth century, the
period of Darwin, the great importance and interest of the
fossil beds came to be better appreciated. Dr. Oswald Heer,
professor at Zurich, an accomplished botanist and entomologist,
did perhaps nine tenths of the work, describing plants,
insects, arachnids and part of the Crustacea. The fishes were
described by Agassiz, and later by Winkler. The remaining
vertebrates were principally made known by E. von Meyer.