#macroscaphites

this was honestly the best opportunity to try and illustrate a suspension feeding ammonite's radula, i think i did pretty well

Ancient cephalopods

Ancient cephalopod 

This week’s prehistoric animal is the macroscaphites. 

Image source: Hectonichus on Wikimedia Commons.

An extinct cephalopod genus included among the ammonites, macroscaphites is notable for its elaborate shell: it has a curled section which becomes straight and then, just as it begins to open, hooks backwards again. Based on assorted studies involving estimated weight and buoyancy, palaeontologists suspect that the shell opening would have faced the surface of the water, so that the coiled end would have pointed upward and the hook-shaped part would have been towards the bottom.

The macroscaphites would have been about 20-30 centimetres long (7.9 – 11.8”) and lived in the early Cretaceous. Its fossils have been found in Europe and northern Africa.

The large Scaphites, Macroscaphites (1876)

Phylum : Mollusca Class : Cephalopoda Subclass : Ammonoidea Order : Ammonitida Suborder : Lytoceratina Family : Lytoceratidae Genus : Macroscaphites Species : M. yvani, M. soaresi

Early Cretaceous (118 - 110 Ma)

30 cm long (size)

Europe and North America (map)

Macroscaphites is an extinct cephalopod genus included in the Ammonoidea that lived during the Barremian and Aptian stages of the Early Cretaceous. Its fossils ave been found throughout most of Europe and North Africa.

Macroscaphites is known to have reached a length of about 20–30 centimetres. The shell is in two basic parts, an early planispirally coiled evolute section followed by a more or less straight section that turns back on itself in a hook.