Hi Science Girl, you've probably received tons of emails from other geologists, but your mystery object is an ammonite fossil, a nautiloid sea creature which lived between the Silurian/Devonian (ca. 400 million years ago) and became extinct with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous (65 Ma). Definitely one of the more spectacular fossils! Nice photos and content on your site by the way.
Cheers,
Jacques
Geologist
GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist has written a blog about science since 4 August 2004 (the early years are archived 




















Comments
Having been in the NHM this morning, the 'missing' plaque identifies it as Asteroceras Stellare from the Early Jurassic
Posted by: Galgacus | September 6, 2008 1:39 PM
If you examine my comment, you'll see I hid the correct answer in a link.
A few other people guessed ammonite as well.
Posted by: llewelly | September 7, 2008 1:12 PM