Jonathan Chidekel

Modern Ammonite (Hecticoceras lunuloceras var. Anthropocene)

cherry, maple, walnut, and mahogany with blue dyed epoxy resin

9 1/2″ x 4″ x 8″

2023

Handcrafted from collected scrap wood, reclaimed firewood, and epoxy-resin mixed with blue dye, my goal was to give new life to discarded scraps. When a fossil forms, hard material such as bones, teeth, or shells is mineralized while all other material decays and is lost. As such, fossils record the physical bounds of extinct life. Ammonites–consisting of the Ammonoidea subclass–lived from the Devonion until the Crataceous-Paleogene extinction event, a span of approximately 300 million years. By comparison, our evolutionary ancestors go back only an approximate 6 million years. What fossils will we create?