Baculties

by Cheryl McClure

Title

Baculties

Artist

Cheryl McClure

Medium

Photograph - Acrylic On Paper

Description

If you have ever hunted the red zone in the North Sulphur River, you most likely saw little black fossils called baculites. Their most distinguishing feature is the suture, those squiggly lines on the surface. Sutures appear on ammonites too but the baculites only developed straight and when they lived in the ocean they floated vertically.

Another interesting thing about baculites; in years gone by, a legend was told about the Buffalo stone, one of these segments. (Shown sitting on top of the flat piece) These stones are said to possess unique properties, and Blackfoot legend dictates that the first Buffalo Stone saved an entire clan of starving people.

When I first started collecting these, I liked to display them in a jar but I ended up gathering so much black phosphatized material that I started placing it between flagstone on our pathway.

Uploaded

September 23rd, 2022

Colors

Embed

Share

Tags