A 19-centimetre ammonite fossil was discovered last week during a field expedition near Jurbarkas in western Lithuania, the Vaclovas Intas Stone Museum announced Tuesday.
Specialists from the Vaclovas Intas Stone Museum and the Kaunas Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum found the specimen in a gravel and sand quarry. The museum said ammonites of this size are extremely rare in Lithuania.
“I was walking along a pile of stones, without even a hammer, when I noticed what looked like a spine sticking out through a crack,” said Valda Vaškienė, deputy director of the Stone Museum. “When the stone split, we were stunned – it was a massive ammonite.”
Expedition leader and geologist Simonas Saarmannas said examples of such size are uncommon in the country. The largest ammonite ever found in Lithuania – measuring 36 centimetres in height and 31 centimetres in diameter – is preserved at the Lithuanian Geological Survey’s Earth Information Centre in Vievis.
Ammonites are an extinct group of marine molluscs that lived in the oceans tens of millions of years ago. While their fossils are found worldwide, large specimens are especially rare in Lithuania, the museum said.
The newly discovered fossil will be added to the museum’s collection as an educational exhibit and will undergo further study by paleontologists.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
