1.9" Silver Iridescent Ammonites

Beautiful silver iridescent ammonite fossils quarried near Mahajanga Province, Madagascar. It is of the genus Cleoniceras which inhabited the shallow seas approximately 110 million years ago. If you catch it in the right light or particularly if it is wet the fossil shine with a brilliant iridescence.

Ammonites were predatory mollusks that resembled 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. Ammonites first appearing in the fossil record 240 million years ago, descending from straight shelled cephalopods. The last lineages disappeared 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous.