Last Thursday, an expedition took place in the Jurbarkas area, organized by specialists from the Kaunas Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum and the Vaclovas Intas Museum of Rare Stones, led by geologist Simonas Saarmann. The purpose of the expedition was to enrich the museums’ collections, gather educational specimens, and become familiar with the most commonly found types of fossils. The findings of this expedition exceeded expectations — a 19 cm diameter ammonite, one of the largest fossils of its kind ever found in Lithuania, was discovered in a gravel and sand quarry.
The ammonite was discovered by Valda Vaškienė, the senior collections curator at the Vaclovas Intas Museum of Rare Stones.
Ammonites are an extinct group of marine cephalopod mollusks that lived tens of millions of years ago. Their fossils serve as natural archives, preserving valuable information about Earth’s geological history, past ecosystems, and paleoclimatic conditions. Although ammonite fossils are found worldwide, specimens of this size are exceptionally rare in Lithuania.
Such findings not only enrich museum collections but also provide a better understanding of prehistoric nature in Lithuania and the ecosystems that once existed here. The specimens will undergo detailed study and will later be exhibited in museums, allowing visitors to observe up close these unique witnesses of life’s evolution on Earth.
