What connects four renaissance painters with Hoppegarten and Grünheide in Germany?
Did you know what last week’s object of the week was?
Well done if you recognised the model shown in last week’s photo was an Ammonite. These extinct molluscs are a sister group to the living Nautilus, and range in size from a few centimetres across to ones as tall as a human! Ammonites are named after the ram-headed Egyptian god Amun, as the ribbed coils of an Ammonite shell look like the horns of a Ram.
The Museum has many examples of Ammonites on display; the specimen shown here is a Dactylioceras, which was a very widespread genus in the time of the dinosaurs. Examples of it have been found in all parts of the world.
The names of this genus comes from the Greek word dactyl which means “finger”, and refers to the branching ribs; If you look closely on the outsde of the shell you can see where the ribs split into two.