Over 400 million years old!

Bottle stoppers and oil spouts can be inlaid with fossils, making truly unique and fascinating gifts as sets.

Orthoceras is on the left, an ammonite on the right.

Orthoceras fossils are dated back to the Silurian Age 400 + million years ago and are the earliest recognizable animals. They are ancestors to the modern day squid. Even though they were among the earliest forms of life, this class of nautiloid is still considered one of the most intelligent forms of ocean life. The Orthoceras ranged in size from a few inches in length to over six feet! They could swim as well as crawl on the ocean floor. By filling the chambers in their shells with air they could float through the seas propelling themselves by squirting jets of water. As they died their shells accumulated upon the ocean floor, then covered by sediments they transformed into stone over the ages. Having a long straight shell their fossils have an iridescent gemlike quality when polished. These Orthoceras specimens are from the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

Although relatively simple in form, ammonites are extremely rich in the information they yield to scientists. These extinct marine animals, which thrived in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras, some 400 to 65 million years ago, were cephalopods, and are thus related to squid, octopus, cuttlefish, and the chambered nautilus. Ammonites were able to swim, thanks to the unique construction of their shell, which was divided into a series of air chambers. The air in the chambers provided buoyancy for the animal to float; like modern cephalopods, they probably moved through the water using jet propulsion. As different species of ammonites lived during different time periods, scientists can use these animals to determine the relative age of the rocks in which their fossils are found ("index fossils"). Because ammonites lived exclusively in marine environments, their presence also indicates the location of prehistoric seas.