Alberta Bearpaw ammonites and Ammolite

70,000,000 Years Ago on Panagea

When North America first appeared as the Pacific Plate thrust up from below it - forming Earth's newest cordillera, the Rocky Mountains - the Bearpaw Sea ran up the middle. It extended from what presently is the Arctic Circle, to the Gulf of Mexico. It was warm, sheltered and teeming with life. In the shallows along the eastern slope of the Rockies there was an abundance of animals hunting, feeding, breeding and dying. It held familiar creatures like crabs, lobsters, cuttlefish, turtles, sharks and ammonites swam alongside prehistoric beasts such as mosasaur, ichthyosaurs, and ten ton fish with jaws like draglines and teeth in the hundreds. They were thriving in an ocean that was rich with plankton due to the enormous amount of fresh water that flowed into it from the Rockies as they rose and the dinosaurs made their brief appearance on the lands.

The Ammonite was among the most succesfull of species in this late Cretaceous marine tableau. It evolved from a gemon ancestor into a genus over fifty thousand species strong. They filled every ecological niche in the early oceans. Some were passive plankton feeders that relied on the currents for movement. Other species were aggressive predators that hunted in packs, jetting along via hydropropulsion with powerful, razor-sharp beaks.

These creatures had one of the largest brains of their time and the largest specimen on record (found on the Antarctic continent) was over ten meters long. Ammonites thrived in every ocean on the planet. Populations rose and fell, diversified into new forms then suffered periodic extinctions, only to mysteriously proliferate again. They continually evolved and adapted to changing climates and eco-spheres.

Cephalopod Morphology Terms:

Phragmocone: external chambered shell.
Septum: internal partition separating the chambers.
Living chamber: space between aperture and last septum.
Siphuncle: tube connecting the living chambers
Suture: juncture of septum with shell which shifts the angle
of plane 90 degrees, begeing the outer shell of ammolite.
Ribs: thickenings of shell corresponding with sutures below.
Keel: thickening along the ventral edge.

Ammonite Structures

Tubercles are bony protuberances (like small horns) that were found along two converging lines of the spiral of the male of the species Placenticeras Intercalare. This gem is also referred to as a "nipplite" and produces a spectacular rainbow eye that dances and follows the light.
Striations are natural wave like ribs that provided structural strength to the shell of the ammonite and now give rainbow lines that flow across the gemstone.
A Siphuncle was a tube structure that ran inside the edge of the spiral shell and controlled the buoyancy of the creature. Hand polished gems from this portion of the fossil has gem covering around three sides of the stone.
Suture gems show a distinctive leaf pattern in shallow indententations of the surface and occur through the partial collapse of the shell surface as it conforms around the fractal structure of the shell wall.
The Ammonite Placenticeras had the most geplex suture lines of any of it's kind. From a straight line on the vertical axis dividing the chambers of the animal like a wall it begees infinitely broad as well as long and begees the shell covering itself. It is a naturally occurring demonstration of Chaos Theory that was not lost on early man.
Researchers today are divided on whether or not mosasaurs and other marine reptiles ate ammonites. Some believe that the circular marks found on ammonite fossils were made by limpid eels, a barnacle like parasite that would attach itself to the shell of the ammonite and, with the help of gastric acids, bore in for a meal.
Cataclysmic volcanic activity from the growing rocky mountains periodically covered huge areas with meters thick ash that settled slowly to the shallow ocean floor killing all life below and capping the remains beneath an iron rich bentonitic clay. The clay effectively sealed off this layer of marine deposition and created a unique environment for mineralization. This resulted in the brilliant colors of the bearpaw ammonites.

Ammonites and many other species were extinguished with the dinosaurs in a mass extinction event nearly 70 million years ago. When it died of natural causes or foul, it was deposited on the bottom of the Bearpaw Sea and was covered with highly iron ion charged sediments and began the 70 million year journey that resulted in Earth's Oldest and Rarest Gemstone: Ammolite.

Only in Alberta, Canada

Found in the Bearpaw formation that extends from Alberta to Saskatchewan in Canada and to Montana in the USA, the best grade of gem quality Ammolite is along high energy river systems on the eastern slopes of the rockies in southern Alberta. Most gemercial mining operations have been conducted along the banks of the St. Marys River south of Lethbridge.