Ammonite

The largest ammonite in the world was found in Seppenrade in 1895. On February 22, 1895, Heinrich Ettmann discovered the fossil in a quarry near the Grube farm in the farming community of Leversum.

Prof. Dr. Hermann Landois bought the giant ammonite with a diameter of 1.80 meters for 125 marks for the then Westphalian Provincial Museum of Natural History. Six horses were needed to transport the fossil, which weighed 3.5 tons, was 1.74 meters tall and 40 cm thick. The floor of the museum also had to be reinforced to accommodate the colossus. The specimen still stands there today (now the LWL Museum of Natural History). Its scientific name is Parapuzosia seppenradensis, named after the place where it was found in Seppenrade. Many other casts of the Seppenrade ammonite, a cast of which can be seen in the center of the village, have gone to numerous natural history museums around the world.

An ammonite is a mollusc from the Cretaceous period. It is thought to have lived around 80 million years ago, when the land was still covered by a large sea. Ammonites were among the most common and species-rich creatures in the oceans. They were cephalopods from the mollusc genus, which also includes squid. A calcareous shell provided protection for the molluscs with its many tentacles. The ammonites became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.

Seppenrade cast of the ammonites, with commemorative plaque, Rosengarten, 59348 Lüdinghausen-Seppenrade