File:Snakestone (Dactylioceras commune ammonite, Whitby Formation, Lower Jurassic; Yorkshire coast, England) (15240494805).jpg

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Snakestone (5.0 cm across) - a Dactylioceras commune ammonite with carved snake head, from the Yorkshire coast of England.

Ammonites from the Whitby area of England have inspired interesting legends & folklore. St. Hilda (614-680 A.D.), an early abbess of Whitby, is said to have cleared the area of snakes by cutting off their heads & throwing them over the cliffs. Whitby locals have been carving snake heads on genuine ammonite fossils for centuries. These “snakestones” have been valued as lucky charms and were perceived to have medical value at one time. Many rocks, fossils, and minerals were long ago considered by superstitious minds to be curatives.

Classification: Animalia, Mollusca, Cephalopoda, Ammonoidea, Ammonitina, Dactylioceratidae

Stratigraphy & age: Whitby Formation, Toarcian Stage, upper Lower Jurassic.

Locality: Yorkshire coast, England.

Ammonites are common & conspicuous fossils in Mesozoic marine sedimentary rocks. Ammonites are an extinct group of cephalopods - they’re basically squids in coiled shells. The living chambered nautilus also has a squid-in-a-coiled-shell body plan, but ammonites are a different group.

Ammonites get their name from the coiled shell shape being reminiscent of a ram’s horn. The ancient Egyptian god Amun (“Ammon” in Greek) was often depicted with a ram’s head & horns. Pliny’s Natural History, book 37, written in the 70s A.D., refers to these fossils as “Hammonis cornu” (the horn of Ammon), and mentions that people living in northeastern Africa perceived them as sacred. Pliny also indicates that ammonites were often pyritized.
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Source Snakestone (Dactylioceras commune ammonite, Whitby Formation, Lower Jurassic; Yorkshire coast, England)
Author James St. John

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This image was originally posted to Flickr by jsj1771 at https://www.flickr.com/photos/47445767@N05/15240494805. It was reviewed on 6 May 2015 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0.

6 May 2015

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current19:08, 6 May 2015Thumbnail for version as of 19:08, 6 May 20151,039 × 1,166 (1.68 MB)Natuur12 (talk | contribs)Transferred from Flickr via Flickr2Commons

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