Saturday 12 March 2011

Pyrite Ammonite

Ammonite-2

Remember I mentioned a fossil from the Bead Fair?  We I finally got round to photographing.  It’s a pyrite (fools gold) fossil of an ammonite and I’ll admit I had never heard of pyrite fossils before.  In fact I initially thought it was a con!  However after a little bit of digging (mobile phones with internet are so wonderful for this) it appears to be genuine.

The blurb says it’s from Michaelov in northern Russia near Finland and formed in sediment which was rich in quartz, magnesium calcite, aragonite, marl and chabazite.  I’m taking that all on face value as I really don’t know.  The man I bought it from said it was 160 million years old and that seems to tally with the info I’ve found for these fossils online.

Regardless it is very pretty and will probably end up hanging on my wall as a decorative piece rather than being worn as jewellery.

2 comments:

  1. I've seen these fossils at jewelry fairs and thought they were plain amonites that had been metal plated! Thanks for the explanation

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