Rosary

Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Rosary: “I believe in the God of the Burgess Shale” (2010)

The Burgess Shale is a 500 million year old fossil-bearing deposit in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, Canada. It is one of the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints. Teresa Nielsen Hayden, the rosary artist, is a science fiction editor at Tor Books and a Catholic convert. In 2004 she wrote, “I believe in the God of the Burgess Shale, Who not only made creation stranger than we know, but stranger than we could ever imagine.

Center piece: ammonite from Morocco; the “medal” attached is from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite

Paternosters: oblong fossil coral flanked by small oolitic cubes

Ave Marias: fossilized agate-filled dinosaur bone agatized Jurassic dinosaur coprolite brown and ochre coquina shell hash (“elephant jasper”) crinoid hash (fossil jasper or fossil marble) fossil coral stromatolitic or oolitic formations including:

– Australian tiger iron
 – Michigan “Mary Ellen” jasper
– African Kambaba jasper
– Chinese bamboo and peach blossom jasper