Ithaca artist Dan Burgevin paints a 12-by-20-foot mural depicting the ecology of life in the seas of the late Jurassic period, when ammonoids swam in massive predatory schools. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the Earth.

The Museum of the Earth at the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), which is affiliated with Cornell University, opened a new exhibit in July on ammonoids, prehistoric sea animals that first appeared in the fossil record 400 million years ago, survived four major extinctions, and died out with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

 

The exhibit, which will be removed this fall, is the second in an ongoing rotation of temporary exhibits at the museum. It draws on PRI’s collection of ammonoid fossils, one of the largest in the country.

 

The earliest written records of ammonoid fossils are from Roman times, and both Hindu and Native American cultures view the fossils as sacred. Native Americans believe the fossils carry healing powers. Until the nautilus was discovered in the early 1700s, no one had any idea what the ammonoids were.

 

“Paleontology works by comparing fossils with things that are alive today, so if we hadn’t found the nautilus, we would never know what this was,” said Warren Allmon, director of PRI, which runs the Museum of the Earth, and adjunct professor in Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. 

 

—Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell News Service