![]() It was Lamarck in 1801 who actually described and named the genus of forams as Nummulites, derived presumably from 'nummulus'. Herodotus and Strabo were both Greek, however Strabo's home country was by then part of the Roman Empire, so the Latin word for coin would have been known to him. ![]() ![]() But who was it who adopted the term first? There has been some musing over where the name for the foram Nummulites came from - was it perhaps to do with the theory that these fossils were once used as currency? After all, the word 'nummulus' is the Latin diminutive of 'nummus' meaning coins or money. He thought this unlikely, as he had observed similar round, flat stones in his home country (modern day Turkey) and instead considered them to be them to be merely stones shaped by water movement. Our first written account of these Foraminifera was by the Greek historian Herodotus in about the 5th century BC, after he noticed these round, flat 'shells' in the Great Pyramids.Īnother Greek historian and geographer, Strabo, travelled to Egypt in about 25 BC and became aware of these lentil-shaped stones, and was told they were supposedly petrified food waste left by the labourers who built the pyramids. Yes, they make perfect coins, don't they? Maybe you can picture it with the engraved profile of your favourite monarch (or pharaoh). PH-TECH-925-162.įrom European folklore, these fossils have been dubbed 'angel's money', as it was thought that the ancient Egyptians used these disc-shaped fossils as currency. Auckland War Memorial Museum - Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Postcard showing a view of the five pyramids at Giza, 1916. The limestone blocks were quarried from outcrops right next to the pyramids. So that's the natural history part - here's the link to human history.Īt Giza, near Cairo, the ancient Egyptians built the bulk of their pyramids using a Nummulites limestone (also of Eocene age). Miogypsina forams in a Kaipara Harbour limestone. It is thought that the large size of Nummulites and Miogypsina is made possible because of a symbiotic relationship they have with photosynthetic algae, which live inside the 'shell'. For example, in our collections, we have this block of 20 million year old Miogypsina limestone from the Kaipara Harbour, featuring hundreds of the lentil-sized fossils. New Zealand, too, has had some large fossil foram species in the past. Some of the diverse forms of microscopic Foraminifera from New Zealand. Nummulites is a giant compared to most of its cousins, measuring between 1.5 and 5 cm - remember they consist of only a single cell. Below is an image of 40 million year old (Eocene age) Auckland Museum specimens, collected from Bracklesham Bay in West Sussex, England. The disc-shaped shell of Nummulites, composed mostly of calcium carbonate, is really a tight coil of chambers which are added as the animal grows. Foraminifera, or forams, are a mostly marine, mostly microscopic group of single-celled animals that have a chambered "shell". The fossils are giant Foraminifera, belonging to the genus Nummulites. ![]() Single-celled giants, the Pyramids and more. Sometimes, human history and natural history are neatly entwined, as was recently discovered when researching a pair of disc-shaped fossil specimens.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |