Hablando como Ammonite- Speaking as Ammonite

Well.... I’m ... I am Ammonite, I’ve been right here in this very place for quite some time. I´ve been waiting around 150 million years and in my 150 million history, so many things have happened. I was born in a sea, a very ancient sea, much, much warmer than the seas of today.

Sea is my life, sea is my medium, in the sea I can move “like a fish in water”.

I felt the waters warmth and because I lived deep down the Darkness too. With my shell full of air, feeling with my tentacles, I let myself drift, and I’d find I don’t know maybe...a small prawn or a maybe a crinoid and they’ve got different flavours.

I love to rise up and fall in the waters of the sea. We ammonites can float up and sink down effortlessly. Our shell is full of gas and we can alter our pressure just like submarines. We sometimes float upwards in search of the light and different foods. And I’m not lying if I say that’s the best feeling in the world.

Normally we go out in a group, but I’m quite solitary so when I can I’ll go out on my own, but my family always say “ Come on, lets go out together ” and that’s our tendency. The death of one of our species or that of a close relation makes you sad, but on the other hand if they’re buried quickly you know they’ll have a better life, that there’s a real possibility that they’ll become a fossil, like what has happened to me and so many of my family members, living here in this rock, in such a different world, at the top of a mountain... and at the beginning at the bottom of a Sea and that’s, that’s wonderful.

I’ve got enemies, there are the other bigger ammonites bully the smaller ones but mainly there are the reptiles, the Marine Reptiles”. There were loads of marine reptiles and we were one of their favourite prey and when, we’d hear the beating of their tails and feel the water pressure rise, it was terrifying and I’d not know where to go. We’d hide inside our shells protected by, by our aptychus and wait and see if they’d get us or pass on by.

Even now being a fossil I still get really scared, especially if someone comes up here with a hammer. Its not that they’ll take me out that worries me, its that they’ll break me, that they won’t know how to get me out or that if they do they won’t know how to appreciate me, and they’ll leave me in a corner. Yeah, that’s what really panics me.

Ammonite - Geologist Alicia Serna Barquero
Audio production ,editing and translation into English - Anna Keleher
Copyright Anna Keleher and Alicia Serna Barquero

For more information visit http://www.annakeleher.com/