• Natural Sciences -> Geology and paleontology

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Are there any famous ammonite specimens on display in museums around the world?

Benito Pavey

Yeah, there are a bunch of famous ammonite specimens on display in various museums around the world! One of the most well-known ones is probably the Ammonite Graveyard in Lyme Regis, England. It's this huge wall of fossils made up of thousands of ammonites that were preserved in the rocks there. Some of them are really big too - like the one they call "The Mother of Pearl" that's over 2 feet across!

Another famous ammonite that you might have heard of is the Baculites. These were a type of ammonite that lived during the Late Cretaceous period, and they had these really long, straight shells that looked like sticks. There's a really impressive Baculites specimen on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. It's over 6 feet long and you can see all the intricate chambers inside the shell.

There are also some really cool ammonite specimens in museums in Europe and Asia. The Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria has some amazing examples of ammonites from the Jurassic period, including some that are really well-preserved with all their spines and tentacles intact. And in Japan, there's a museum called the Nihonkai Fossil Museum that has a whole exhibit on ammonites. They even have a giant replica of an ammonite shell that you can climb inside!

Of course, those are just a few of the most famous examples. There are tons of other museums that have ammonite collections, and many of them are really impressive. It's amazing to think that these creatures lived millions of years ago, and yet we can still see their remains today. To me, it's a reminder of just how much history there is in the world, waiting to be discovered.