The Solnhofen beds lie in the German state of Bavaria (Bayern), halfway between Nuremberg (Nürnberg) and Munich (München) and were originally quarried as a source of lithographic limestone.

The Jura Museum situated in Eichstätt, Germany has an extensive exhibit of Jurassic fossils from the quarries of Solnhofen and surroundings, including marine reptiles, pterosaurs, and one specimen of the early bird Archaeopteryx.

This included placid lagoons that had limited access to the open sea and where salinity rose high enough that the resulting brine could not support life.

Over 600 species have been identified, including twenty-nine kinds of pterosaur ranging from the size of a sparrow to 1.2 m (4 ft) in length.

Such formations are not plant fossil remains, but iron and manganese oxides (psilomelane, (Ba,H2O)2Mn5O10) that crystallized out of solutions on bedding planes of the Solnhofen limestone.