World's Largest Ammonite - Cast

In October of 2010 I wrote a blog post about what is rumored to be the World's Largest Ammonite.  This fossil impression is located in the interior of British Columbia, near Fernie.  My company, Palcoprep Inc. put together a proposal to cut this fossil out of the rock face that preserved it, and move it down to an institution that was willing to become involved in the process of preparing and documenting it.  This would have been an enormous undertaking as the fossil is located quite some distance up a stream bed, on a sloped rock face.

We could not locate any group or organization that was interested in hiring us to extract the fossil.  There were mixed emotions about this as the fossil has been known for at least 50 years, and it is a popular hiking destination for many locals.

We eventually gave up on the idea of removing it.  The driving factor behind this idea was the fact that this fossil can not be recognized as the world's largest unless it is collected and turned over to a museum or learning institution of some sort.

Later in October of 2012 I provided an update.  Palcoprep was working in the area making molds of a dinosaur trackway site at a local coal mine.  While we were there we decided to take a mold of the ammonite.  Although this would still not officially recognize it as potentially the world's largest, at least it would provide a record of the specimen.  The original fossil was slowly eroding away and over the years pieces of it had been stolen.  As the fossil was located on crown land, it was perfectly legal for us to take a silicone rubber mold from the fossil.  Since we were in the area anyway, we elected to invest the time and materials to do so.  We eventually brought the mold back to our shop in Drumheller.  We attempted to solicit some interest in the mold and offered to produce a cast to various organizations in southeastern British Columbia.  So far we have not been able to generate a sale.  But, we did produce one cast from the mold so far, and for the time being at least, it resides down in our shop.

When I was down in Drumheller a few days ago I took a couple of snapshots of this cast.  It looks pretty impressive and hopefully some day someone will be interested in putting it on display.  These photographs don't give an accurate idea as to how big this fossil really is.  It is about the size of a tractor tire.  If you refer back to my original blog entries you can see photographs of the Palcoprep guys working on the mold and gain some appreciation for just how big this thing really is...