Ammonites, Part 2

I became obsessed with making a messenger [flat profile] purse with the outline of a spiral, i.e. ammonites shape. I argued with myself over the next couple of weeks about what material to use, whether to try to reproduce the interior sections of the fossil ammonites on the outer surface of the purse as a decoration, and how to do that, and how that would or wouldn't fit with pockets, and so forth. I haven't come to any conclusions yet. It sounds like a lot of work. But so is hauling around my purse.

Meanwhile I became obsessed with this fossil. I wasn't sure I remembered the name. I was thinking, "ammonite," but then that sounded a lot like a religious group. No, that is Mennonite. I started thinking of all the things that could be called "ammonites" and thus the source of the recent, rather silly, series. Also, I found that it says something about the principle of independent investigation of truth. People will believe anything, although nothing of what I said in my posts was meant to be believable.

The reason I love ammonites was that a good friend of my husband, a Seventh Day Adventist, [the friend, not my husband], told a bald-faced lie last year. With a straight face he mentioned that the earth is only six thousand years old. The next time I was at the Gem Faire, I bought up a bunch of beautiful ammonite and other fossils, which were reputed to be three million years old. Take that, Mr. Bible Believer. Plus, they occur in that magical spiral shape.

According to Wikipedia, not Pikiwedia, ammonites are an extinct group of marine cephalopods, related to octopi, squids and cuttlefish. Their name came from their spiral shape, as the fossilized shells were thought to resemble the horns of a ram [not a goat. Oops.] There is an Egyptian god named Ammon who was depicted wearing ram's horns, for which Pliny the Elder named this fossil. The soft body of the creature occupied the largest segments of the shell at the end of the coil. The smaller, earlier segments were walled off and the animal could fill these with gas [from what source is not mentioned] and thus maintain its buoyancy.

The above paragraph is a blatant ripoff from an article in Wikipedia, with some words rearranged to suit me. Thank God for fourth grade.