2" Discoscaphites Ammonite - South Dakota

Discoscaphites Ammonite - South Dakota #8963

This is a beautiful, 2" wide Discoscaphites conradi from the Fox Hills Formation of South Dakota. It was found inside of a hard concretion and the rock had to be meticulously prepared away. It displays well, standing upright on it's own.

Ammonites were predatory cephalopod mollusks that resembled squids with spiral shells. They are more closely related to living octopuses, though their shells resemble that of nautilus species. True ammonites appeared in the fossil record about 240 million years ago during the Triassic Period. The last lineages disappeared 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous.

What an ammonite would have looked like while alive.

More about ammonites