I want to share with you a special little adventure I had recently on the beautiful island of Rügen. I went for a long hike by the Baltic Sea with the hope of finding some interesting fossils. It was a perfect day outside, and I am excited to tell you what I have found and discovered. I already made an Actifit post about the journey and a video of the trip (please watch it below), but I had some trouble uploading it together. The video includes my hike, views from the beautiful forest, a stunning beach, some side facts about the chalk rocks and some thoughts along the line. To bring something extra with this post (additional to the video) and not only repeat the story from my Actifit post, I decided to tell you more about the fossils I have found and finally post my first time into the Amazing Nature (AN) community. 🙂Spoiler alert: I reached my side goal - I have found four thunder stones. What are these? Read below. 😉
This is not my usual workflow because I don’t like to write multiple posts about the same event. I have recorded the whole hike on video and spent a lot of effort to process my footage. I worked more than four hours on editing the video. After so much time, I really wanted to share it together with my Actifit post: but the upload failed. Unfortunately, this happens almost every time when I try to upload something this way, and yes, of course, it bugs me a lot.
I got now pretty clear signals that these upload issues will not be completely fixed in near future, so I have decided to not let this waste my time anymore. From now on, I will use centralized social media aka youtube to upload my videos for Hive. I don’t want to complain more about the situation or write about how the 3Speak team reacted to my reports. I can understand their side but in my specific user perspective the app and website are not worth of using in the current very unstable state. I want to create and share content, not spend my time fighting with upload processes or even start coding for 3Speak trying to fix the issues myself. But now let's start:
The so-called Donnerkeile (translated: thunder stones) are very common fossils along the Baltic Sea, especially in northern Germany. These are actually the remains of belemnites, which were ancient sea creatures related to modern squids. But they were a bit different. Belemnites had a hard internal skeleton and instead of using tentacles like squids today, they hunted with small hooks on their arms.
Belemnites lived in the seas millions of years ago, and they were very common creatures back then. Their story ended about 66 million years ago, around the same time the dinosaurs disappeared.
But even today, we can find their traces, mostly in the form of their solid back part made of aragonite called the rostrum or sometimes simply the guard. This part was not formed after their death like other fossils. It was already created while the belemnite was alive. Like many animals (including humans), belemnites could extract minerals from their food and store them inside their bodies. For example, our bones are also built this way. The belemnites put calcium carbonate into their rostrum, probably as a counterweight to balance their swimming. Of course this is a very simplified explanation as I am not a chemist or biologist 🥸
The name Donnerkeil comes from ancient beliefs. People thought these stones were created when lightning hit the sea. Today we know their real story, but I still like this idea from the past. You can find belemnite fossils all over the world, but Northern Europe is one of the best places to find them. Along the Baltic Sea, they are really very common, but still, I am quite proud of my four little discoveries. 😊
When you go walking on the beaches, you really need to take your time and look carefully, because most of these fossils are not very big. They can look like simple stones at first. Sometimes they are very smooth, sometimes they have small lines on them. And often you can not see them at all because the real fossils are hidden inside of the stones. It’s a special feeling to find and hold something in your hand that was swimming in the sea millions of years ago. It is like a small time travel and I thought about how many millions of years these belemnites were hidden in the stones and how long they waited until someone finds them. Probably nobody ever touched them before - otherwise they would not lay at the beach now. This makes me feel small but also very connected to the history of our planet and I realize how meaningless and meaningful our presence is to this planet. It is a nice feeling to know that life was here long before us and will continue long after us. All the human-made issues we have today will be over in 10 million years, and even then, these fossils will lie on the beaches (if there are any left then) ♾️
While scanning the beach, I realized that searching for fossils is not only about finding them. It is about carefully looking, patience, mindfulness and so much more. I have walked this beautiful beach for two hours and barely found anything fossil-related but I have enjoyed the time at the beach, the rolling waves, the moist air, and the sound of the many birds enjoying their time as well. But then, after finding the first Donnerkeil - within just a few minutes, I found three more. It is like life: You never know when luck/success comes, but you have to keep going and enjoying the process.
Before we had the amber tour on Rügen, I did not know much about belemnites. I thought fossils were only big dinosaur bones in museums or seashells engraved into stones. But now I know that many smaller fossils are also very important and can tell us a lot about the history of our planet. When I look at my small collection now, I feel proud because I found them myself, and I know their story. I can really recommend that you try a fossil hunt at least once as well. Even if you don’t find anything, the walk and the adventure are worth it. And maybe, if you are lucky, you also find your own little thunder stone. I think I will go again soon to search for more fossils in the Hamburg area. There are many resources online marking spots in northern Germany where you can find all kinds of fossils ranging from whale bones to insects and of course plant fossils. I will update you when I go on such a trip for sure!
Let us know your story in the comments and tell us what you have found and how your experience was holding history in your bare hands!
And now: Thank you for reading about my fossil hunt and for watching my vlog about it! I hope that this post can inspire you to go on your own fossil hunt and explore nature yourself. Sometimes, the smallest things (like a little thunder stone) can connect us with the distant past and can help us to learn new things about our surroundings.
In my video I have mentioned the next big Hive Creator Days Event that will happen in Alicante from the 30th of April to 3rd of May 2026. If you want to know more about that, click here!
@worldmappin 🌍
