Ammonites are a tale of two textures. The prehistoric cephalopods were composed of fleshy soft tissue (the living bit of the animals) and hard external shells, which, according to a paper published ...

Ammonoids, ancestors of today's octopus, squid and cuttlefish, bobbed and jetted their way through the oceans for around 340 million years beginning long before the age of the dinosaurs. If you look ...

Robotic ammonites, evaluated in a university pool, allow researchers to explore questions about how shell shapes affected swimming ability. They found trade-offs between stability in the water and ...

They found that the now-extinct molluscs sported hyponomes: tube-like syphons through which water is expelled to jet propel animals forward in water, as found in modern squid and octopuses. They also ...

For over 300 million years, the ammonites ruled the prehistoric seas. Finding an ammonite fossil isn’t particularly rare (they can be unearthed all over the world) but they’re still thrilling to ...

The bizarre fossil is one of very few records of soft tissue in a creature better known as a whorled shell. By Sabrina Imbler If anxious humans have nightmares of being naked in public, an anxious ...

Some extinct species left copious fossil remnants of their existence. Ammonites—an extinct type of cephalopod—are one such example. From the Devonian right up until the Paleocene, wherever ancient ...

Jewelry makers have been showcasing the marine mollusk, and vintage sellers say they can’t keep them in stock. By Chantel Tattoli The swirly shell that held the voice of the Little Mermaid in Disney’s ...

Evidence for ammonite survival into the Paleogene era is solid, a new study confirms, indicating that these ancient mollusks were well positioned to inherit oceans now cleared of competitors. Yet for ...