Ammonite Fossils in the Field
Photo credit: Graham Beard personal collection
Out in the field, don’t expect to be able to reach down and pick up a perfect, museum-ready specimen; most of the time you’ll find something more like this, fossils that are well-embedded and often partially obscured by the matrix. (No reference to the movies here– “matrix” is the geological term for the material in which something like fossils or crystals is embedded.)
It takes lots of very careful and detailed work to clear the matrix away from a specimen like this.