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| trilobite (not mine) |
(Sorry I've been absent...was out of town for some time.) When I was a kid, I wanted to be a paleontologist. That dream was almost realized in college when I was going for my minor in earth and environmental studies (much to my parents' horror...Don't worry. I ended up with a creative writing degree). I spent some time doing field study in the Ozarks and was amazed how it isn't that difficult to find certain fossils. The Paleozoic era (the era before the dinosaurs..basically the first life forms) was rich in sea life, so these fossils are really common. Next time you're out and about...see if there's anything poking out of the rock.
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| some kind of brachiopod I found in the Ithaca, NY gorge |
So, if you're looking for fossil jewelry, you're probably going to find certain kinds over and over again from that era: trilobites (the bug-looking guy above/below), ammonites (the spiral shell below), and crinoids (these echinoderms still exist today!). It's pretty amazing and powerful to wear something that was alive 300-500 million years ago. That's almost half a billion years ago.
Fossil Jewelry featuring gold earrings
You'll notice in the polyvore set above that there are also some "recent" animals/plants there from the pleistocene--megalodon (a shark), mammoth tusks, petrified wood. It's hard to buy fossil jewelry because 1) fossils don't always lend themselves to aesthetically pleasing, symmetrical designs. Sometimes they just look like funny looking rocks. 2) Creatures are one-of-a-kind, so fossils are one-of-a-kind...these won't be mass-produced and will be hard to find. well, except for mammoth right now...
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| crinoids are made of these donut-shaped rings and fall apart when they die. Native Americans used to use the rings as beads. |
Right now, mammoth is the humane alternative to ivory, as people are mining the mammoth graveyards. I've got two mammoth earrings. I love the brownish beige color.
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| btw... i kinda miss this hairstyle. the blond and brown drove me crazy, but it actually looks awesome |
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| my fossil collection: two corals from my field study days in the Ozarks and the trilobite my husband got me for my birthday one year. Bonus: a tiny snippet of my husband's very large occult library (and our tarot books). We keep my fossils next to them. |
