Fiery Iridescent Red Ammonite 3.45 Inches

Fiery Iridescent Red Ammonite Inches #421

The pictures don't do these ammonites justice. When the light hits they right they shine a fiery, iridescent red color. At 3.45 inches across this is the largest one I have with this property. For something so beautiful it's hard to imagine it was a living creature inhabiting the shallow seas nearly 110 million years ago at the time of the dinosaurs. This is a beautiful fossil both from the aesthetic and the historical perspective.

Ammonites were predatory mollusks that resembled squids with shells. These cephalopods had eyes, tentacles, and spiral shells. Though their shells resemble that of a nautilus, they are actually more closely related to living octopuses. Ammonites appeared in the fossil record about 240 million years ago, barely surviving several major extinction events. The last lineages disappeared 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous.

Artist's reconstruction of an ammonite, by Nobu Tamura

More about ammonites