Small Iridescent Aragonite Ammonite

Description

Small Iridescent Aragonite Ammonite from Madagascar ~145 – 66 million years old. As with all fossils, the original calcium based shell has been replaced with rock forming minerals, in this case, Aragonite.

Ammonites are a useful and valuble tool in leaning about marine life in the past, and even what the climate was like. These are an extinct variety marine animals from the Mollusca phylum. Ammonites are found from the Devonian period, but they became more prolific in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago. This extinction event is known as the K – T extinction, where approximately 80% of life globally became extinct. This is a well known extinction event that involved the impact of a meteorite in what is now Mexico.