Alex has wonderful flashbacks to her childhood when she looks at the ammonite in Earth Heritage with a pearlescent sheen. It reminds her of when she was little, digging for fossils in the Quarry Wood industrial estate, Aylesford, with her Grandpa. This was at the back of his house through the orchard (there's a housing estate on the orchard now and an extra house in what was his garden)!
The word ammonite comes from the Greek word for a curly ram's horn and is also associated with the Egyptian god Ammon. Ammonites lived in the sea around 400 million years ago and became extinct around 65 million years ago. They belong to a group of predatory molluscs known as cephalopods which now include relatives like the octopus, squid and cuttlefish. Ammonites vary in size; some are the size of a small coin, others are as big as a tyre.
Ammonites are excellent 'index' fossils, which means it is often possible to link the rock layer in which they are found to a specific geological time period.
