5 Inch Cut and Polished Cleoniceras Ammonite

Inch Cut and Polished Cleoniceras Ammonite #769

Here is a beautiful Cleoniceras ammonite from Madagascar. It's been sliced open and highly polished. Many of the chambers within it are preserved as deep crystal lined pockets. The reverse side displays some great "mother of perl" colored shell. This is a truly beautiful fossil, can you believe it's 110 million years old?

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

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