Ammonites
Pronounced – Am-mon-nite
Meaning of name – The shell resembles the coiled ram’s horn (a ram was the symbol for the Egyptian god Ammon)
Group – Cephalopods, Mollusc
Age – Lower Jurassic, around 195 million years old
Ammonites are a well known fossil and easily recognised by their coiled shell. They first appeared around 400 million years ago and became a very successful group of animals. They died out around the same time as the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Ammonites were free swimming creatures related to squid and octopuses. Like these modern relatives they would have been predators, catching prey with their long tentacles. Their shell was divided up into chambers filled with liquid and gas, which kept them buoyant in the water. They can be preserved in a number of different ways.
Click on the images below to find out more.
Asteroceras assemblage These ammonites have been painstakingly prepared from the hard limestone rock that protected them. They have been preserved in 3D so you can see the actual shapes of these Jurassic shells which have been preserved in calcite.
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