Tiltoniceras antiquum (WRIGHT, 1882), 4.5 cm diameter

It´s more than 20 years ago that I found the above ammonite, and it has remained the only 3D preserved Yorkshire specimen of this species so far in my collection.
It was found, probably in a semicelatum subzone nodule, at Runswick Bay. “Probably”, because nothing much remained of the original nodule…

At that time, we used to sit down on the terrace of our then accommodation in nice weather and reduce weight on the fossils as much as we could, we were coming by plane to London and took trains and buses to Yorkshire, so luggage weight was restricted, both by the airline and the amount of rock we could carry…

The ammonite must have been damaged by splitting the nodule already and I obviously tried to extract the better preserved side by separating it from it´s heavy nodule matrix using only small chisels and hammer – this is why this ammonite ended being like it is today – a rather damaged specimen.

I must have also taken it for an Eleganticeras, because some years later when I was re-organizing my drawers I looked at my Eleganticeras specimen again
and found there was one that somehow did look different from a same sized Eleganticeras.

The umbilicus is the shell element that clearly distinguishes Eleganticeras and Tiltoniceras :
While Eleganticeras has an angled umbilical edge, Tiltoniceras has a smoothly rounded umbilical edge.

Comparison of umbilicus of approximately same sized Tiltoniceras (left) and Eleganticeras (right)

There are some beds on the Yorkshire coast where crushed, flattened Tiltoniceras are quite abundant, but I find it quite difficult to distinguish flattened Tiltoniceras from flattened Eleganticeras :

Bed with crushed Tiltoniceras antiquum, diameter of largest ammonite 4.5 cm

It is only quite clear when you find them with Dactylioceras semicelatum in the same bed, like in a photograph I´ve shown in an earlier post :

Flattened D. semicelatum and Tiltoniceras

Of course with hindsight, the ammonite would have deserved a much better preparation.
Today I´d probably recognize it for what it is and with much better tools and a lot more experience attempt a transfer preparation of the broken off pieces,
and display it on the half nodule, keeping it in it´s natural matrix. But – it is what it is, a product of what I knew and could do then.

AndyS

Long time, no blog post. Did you miss me ?

I´m currently working very hard. Sadly, not on the book, not on the blog, but in my bread-winning job, which is making me work a lot of hours these days,
on a very tight timeline, which has nothing to do with fossils. So I´m not really having much spare time at the moment, and if I do I need it to recover, reload my batteries so to speak. That´s also why I had to skip our traditional spring time holiday on the Yorkshire coast, which is quite annoying, but unavoidable.
So no fresh fossils at the moment…

But there is light at the end of the tunnel (or is it the oncoming train ?), and I´m slowly beginning to reclaim some of the things I love doing outside of my daily job.

This is probably the first fossil I laid hands on to do a little bit of prep work in 3-4 months, and I still have a pile of stuff to do from last year´s summer holiday…

Cleviceras exaratum, 6 cm

It is a 6 cm Cleviceras exaratum, found at Hawsker almost exactly 5 years ago to the date. It was already mostly prepped before, but I decided to do some finishing by grinding the aperture to prepare it for the next “real” blog post which will start to cover some of the Harpoceratinae, i.e. Tiltoniceras, Eleganticeras, Cleviceras.

More soon…

AndyS