WOW, thats a big one!

On our last walk we found some more fossils. It wasn’t as such that we were searching for them, but we were just scanning the rocks as we walked pass them. The first couple Brian found, and he described for me what they would have looked like, I did need a bit of imagination. These fossils were just lying on the edge of a field, that was covered in hundreds of rocks.

I headed off along the path and left Brian to take some pics. About another 12 feet further on I exclaimed, “Is this what they were like?”. I pointed to this rather wonderful specimen of what I now know is an Ammonite, measuring about 10cm across.

“WOW”, he replied, “That’s a big fossil for your first find”. He took some pictures of it in situ, and we agreed this was one to take home to clean up and keep. I straight away sent a pic to Brian’s brother, Alan, to ask if he could share what he knew about it, and this is what he said;

Ammonites are marine invertebrates that died out at the end of the Cretaceous period along with the non-avian dinosaurs, when an asteroid hit the earth killing 80+ % of all life. Ammonites are related to nautilus, squid, octopus etc. My one is Cretaceous. The Cretaceous - Tertiary extinction was around 66 million years ago. In the first photo you can see the chambers of the ammonite - those lines (suture lines) delineate the chambers as the ammonite grew. It’s living chamber is the largest one. The rest were pressurized and helped it move through the water layer.