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Up for sale is a Perisphinctes Ammonite fossil. Perisphinctes is an extinct genus of ammonite cephalopod. They lived during the middle to late Jurassic epochs and serve as an index fossil for that time period.
This ammonite came from Bavaria, West Germany, and is 160 million years old. This fossil measures 2 inches wide. Ammonites were soft-bodied marine molluscs that lived in spiral, compressed, multi-chambered shells. The outermost chamber of the shell housed the animal itself. The earliest ammonites appeared during the Devonian time period, about 400 million years ago, and the last ammonites vanished in the Cretaceous time period, approximately 66 million years ago, as a result of the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs. Ammonites are excellent index fossils, which means that the presence of a particular ammonite species in a geologic strata helps to identify the age of the fossils found in that layer. This is because certain species of ammonites only lived during specific time periods. Ammonites are sometimes confused with the similar-appearing nautilus. An ammonite can be distinguished from a nautilus by the pattern of its shell sutures, which are more complex and squiggly in the ammonite. This undulation in an ammonite’s sutures also creates a ribbed look to the outer surface of its shell, while the shell of the nautilus is smooth.
This ammonite came from Bavaria, West Germany, and is 160 million years old. This fossil measures 2 inches wide. Ammonites were soft-bodied marine molluscs that lived in spiral, compressed, multi-chambered shells. The outermost chamber of the shell housed the animal itself. The earliest ammonites appeared during the Devonian time period, about 400 million years ago, and the last ammonites vanished in the Cretaceous time period, approximately 66 million years ago, as a result of the K-T event that killed the dinosaurs. Ammonites are excellent index fossils, which means that the presence of a particular ammonite species in a geologic strata helps to identify the age of the fossils found in that layer. This is because certain species of ammonites only lived during specific time periods. Ammonites are sometimes confused with the similar-appearing nautilus. An ammonite can be distinguished from a nautilus by the pattern of its shell sutures, which are more complex and squiggly in the ammonite. This undulation in an ammonite’s sutures also creates a ribbed look to the outer surface of its shell, while the shell of the nautilus is smooth.
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