4.6" Fossil (Jeletzkytes) Ammonite - South Dakota

Fossil (Jeletzkytes) Ammonite - South Dakota #129526

This is a gorgeous 4.6" wide Jeletzkytes nebrascensis ammonite specimen collected from the Fox Hills Formation of South Dakota. The shell is still in excellent condition and in spots exhibits iridescence. It appears to have been prepped free from the rock it was found in, repaired and then remounted back to the rock/nodule.

These 70 million year old ammonites lived when South Dakota was a shallow inland sea. It was found preserved in a concretion that was split open. It then had to be hand prepared to remove the hard rock surrounding it from the shell, a very time consuming task.

Ammonites were predatory mollusks that resembled a squid with a shell. These cephalopods had eyes, tentacles, and spiral shells. They are more closely related to a living octopus, though the shells resemble that of a nautilus. True ammonites appeared in the fossil record about 240 million years ago. The last lineages disappeared 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous.

What an ammonite would have looked like while alive.