Full text articles are included for reference purposes only. All rights are retained by Ward Cameron. Articles must not be published, or reproduced in any way without the express permission of Ward Cameron.

We've all seen them as we walk down Banff avenue. As we look into the various store windows we see a large reddish, almost iridescent shell surrounded by a number of bobbles and earrings made from its obliterated relatives. Ammonites are a semi-precious stone becoming very common in the areas jewellery and gift shops.

Related to most of the oceans shelled animals, they are, or were, mollusks. Closely related to today's squids they had long tentacles, eyes and highly developed nervous systems. All of this was encased in a spiral shell. They first appeared during the Devonian period almost 400 million years ago. Well adapted to the worlds oceans, they quickly evolved into a wide variety of forms who then spread widely across the globe. By the end of the Cretaceous (around 70 million years ago) they had followed the dinosaurs into extinction.

Although similar to today's octopus and squid, their shells were very distinct from either of these relatives. Their quick diversification also led to their having both male and female forms with one sex being much larger than the other. Today, with only fossil remains to examine, it's very difficult to tell which of the sexes was the larger. This forces biologists to use the terms macroconch and microconch instead of male and female.

I had often wondered how these shells could be mined and sold when fossils are generally protected. A quick call to a friend at the Tyrrell Museum cleared up the conflict. Apparently in 1978, the Alberta Government passed the Historical Resources Act which declared that all fossil resources belonged to the crown. However there were certain exemptions from this act and they included clams and oysters, as well as ammonites. This is due to their great abundance.

Another interesting thing about ammonites: the process that turns them into a semi precious stone requires their being crushed and altered due to chemical changes during the crushing process. This crushing destroys all the internal structure that paleontologists need for identification. As a result, the ammonites that gem hunters look for are of little interest to biologists and vise versa. Those that have not been crushed do not have the attractive iridescent colouration so treasured by miners and gem hunters. This is one of the few cases where the scientists and the miners both are looking for the same creature but in different levels of preservation.

The Historical Resources Act also allows for some limited collection of items not on its list of exemptions. Technically if an item can be picked off the surface without any movement of the soil around it, it can be collected. If you need to give it a kick with your boot to loosen it, it is considered to be an excavation. Any material collected in this way must remain within the province though and cannot be sold. This exemption does not apply to parks and other protected areas. If you have a fossil collection obtained prior to 1978, you can register it with the province and have ownership transferred back to you.