stephbg | Pretty rock group of the day: Marine fossils and meteorite

Pretty rock group of the day: Marine fossils

I don't have very many fossils at all, mainly because the really interesting ones are well beyond my resources and I'm happy to leave that kind of collecting to cashed-up educational institutions. The odd one has caught my eye and my purse. Why do the fossils follow the pyrites? Because the first fossil *is* a pyrite.

There are many ammonites out there. I have two.

Pyritized Ammonite (Russia)

These were a seriously pleasant surprise when I looked at the pictures. The original is about 18mm at its widest, so I've never really been aware of all the detail.

Opalized Ammonite. Not a lot of opal, but if there were this wouldn't be in my possession.

I tried to capture the colours in the opalised parts, but the best way to see them is to use bright light, which also happens to bounce off the polished surface. I have some other chunks of opal and it will be interesting to see what I will be able to capture from those.

The detail here is gorgeous. I had no idea :-)

Agatized Fossil Coral. This one's a bit unusual, and it's been a long time since I've looked at it closely. This is a great project. Every day is like Christmas. Apologies for all the dust, but it's not visible to the naked eye.

There's one more but it's a bit rude.

At least two and possibly all three of these came from an amazing antique/collectible/curio shop called The Gallereum right in the middle of the CBD. You could buy a giraffe skeleton there, ancient Egyptian artifacts, collectable coins, meteorites (I have one) or fossilised dinosaur poo. I miss it greatly and have found nothing to compare since it closed many years ago. I've often wondered what happened to all the stock. But wait! Google tells me it's back there! OOOHHHH! Corner of Mill Street and St Georges Terrace. I'll phone to check, but if it's opened again it would be AMAZING. I should be able to find shark and crocodile teeth there no problem.

…and POO the phone is disconnected. Looks like all the business directory entries are simply out of date :-(

Here, may as well have a meteorite, which is rather more lovely and interesting than I recalled. This was allegedly collected in 1576 in Argentina. I say allegedly because I have difficulty believing that I own something discovered by humans so long ago. How many people have owned it? How did they feel about it? Different time scales blow my mind all the time.