THE MASTERPIECE

For decades – perhaps even centuries – this hard limestone ball lay weathered out on the ground in the endless solitude of Queensland in the north of Australia. But even when the discoverer cracked it open with his hammer, only small cross-sections of ammonites were visible. Fortunately, the finder recovered even the smallest fragments of this calcareous concretion and took the whole thing to his preparation studio in France. However, the treasure he had discovered turned out to be a painstaking, nerve-wracking task. Seven ammonites of a species that had never been found before!

Interestingly, they are probably from two generations: Three of the ammonites are significantly larger than the remaining four. How should this be interpreted? We assume that two generations of ammonites were attached with their curled ends to a ball of seaweed floating on the surface of the water. At some point, the seaweed may have sunk to the seabed, dragging the ammonites into the depths and thus to their deaths. Chemical reactions between the lime dissolved in the seawater and the decaying soft parts of the ammonites and the seaweed formed a calcareous nodule around the ammonites – the structure that lay apparently worthless on the bottom over 70 million years later.

The preparation of this piece is also a unique masterpiece: the artist was able to preserve the entire outside of the stone and only hollowed out the inside in such a way that all the ammonites are now hidden in the nodule’s cavity as if under a bell.