Traveling to the Tucson Gem, Mineral and Fossil show each February is Alisha’s and my favorite time of year. Many mothers and daughters go to the spa or the mall for retail therapy but this week together in Tucson is our mother daughter bonding time. We find inspiration, ogle mineral specimens and museum quality fossils and we play with dinosaurs. We scour the show for what we believe are the best opals, handpick ammonites and trilobites and brainstorm about design ideas. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. After a day of food truck snacks, we treat ourselves to dinner out and fall into bed soon after to start the process over again in the morning.
Over 10,000 species of ammonites thrived within Earths oceans between the early Devonian age (400 million years ago) through the extinction event, 66 million years ago. The extinct marine ammonite belonged to the class cephalopod and is closely related to octopus, squid and cuttlefish. Their fossils are an excellent index to link rock layers to geological time periods. Their fossilized multi-chambered shells vary vastly between species many are strikingly beautiful!
