Look out, Tiffany! A priceless gemstone made its debut at the Museum of Natural History yesterday: an 80-million-year-old fossilized sea creature.
It’s a two-feet-in-diameter fossil of a marine animal called an ammonite, whose iridescent, rainbow-colored, snail-like shell was transformed over millions of years into ammolite. That’s one of three gemstones, along with amber and pearl, produced by living organisms.
According to Neil Landman, the museum’s curator of invertebrate fossils, the sea creature became extinct about 65 million years ago, around the same time as the dinosaurs.
“A fossil like this is extremely rare,” said Ken Oschipok, of Korite International, the Canadian gemstone company that donated the piece to the museum after its discovery in Alberta.