A shaligram, or shaligrama shila, is a fossilized stone or ammonite collected from the riverbed or banks of the Kali Gandaki, a tributary of the Gandaki River in Nepal. It is also considered a form of Vishnu within Hinduism.The Kali Gandaki river flows through sacred places such as Muktinath and Damodar Kunda, enhancing the spiritual significance of these shaligrams.

Ammonoids are extinct spiral shelled cephalopods comprising the subclass Ammonoidea. They are more closely related to living coleoids than they are to shelled nautiloids. The earliest ammonoids appeared during the Devonian, with the last species vanishing during or soon after the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. They are often called ammonites, which is most frequently used for members of the order Ammonitida, the only living group of ammonoids from the Jurassic up until their extinction.