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A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot. Fishers sometimes call cephalopods "inkfish", referring to their common ability to squirt ink. The study of cephalopods is a branch of malacology known as teuthology.
The Nautilida constitute a large and diverse order of generally coiled nautiloid cephalopods that began in the mid Paleozoic and continues to the present with a single family, the Nautilidae which includes two genera, Nautilus and Allonautilus, with six species. All told, between 22 and 34 families and 165 to 184 genera have been recognised, making this the largest order of the subclass Nautiloidea.
Ommastrephidae is a family of squid containing three subfamilies, 11 genera, and over 20 species. They are widely distributed globally and are extensively fished for food. One species, Todarodes pacificus, comprised around half of the world's cephalopod catch annually.
Samuel Stillman Berry was an American marine zoologist who specialized in cephalopods.
Teuthology is the study of cephalopods. Cephalopods are members of the class Cephalopoda in the Phylum Mollusca. Some common examples of cephalopods are octopus, squid, and cuttlefish. Teuthology is a large area of study that covers cephalopod life cycles, reproduction, evolution, anatomy and taxonomy.
Nautiloids are a group of marine cephalopods (Mollusca) which originated in the Late Cambrian and are represented today by the living Nautilus and Allonautilus. Fossil nautiloids are diverse and species rich, with over 2,500 recorded species. They flourished during the early Paleozoic era, when they constituted the main predatory animals. Early in their evolution, nautiloids developed an extraordinary diversity of shell shapes, including coiled morphologies and giant straight-shelled forms (orthocones). No orthoconic and only a handful of coiled species, the nautiluses, survive to the present day.
Endocerida is an extinct nautiloid order, a group of cephalopods from the Lower Paleozoic with cone-like deposits in their siphuncle. Endocerida was a diverse group of cephalopods that lived from the Early Ordovician possibly to the Late Silurian. Their shells were variable in form. Some were straight (orthoconic), others curved (cyrtoconic); some were long (longiconic), others short (breviconic). Some long-shelled forms like Endoceras attained shell lengths close to 6 metres (20 ft). The related Cameroceras is anecdotally reported to have reached lengths approaching 9 metres (30 ft), but these claims are problematic. The overwhelming majority of endocerids and nautiloids in general are much smaller, usually less than a meter long when fully grown.
The tusk shells or tooth shells, technically the Scaphopoda, are members of a class of shelled marine mollusc with worldwide distribution, and are the only class of exclusively infaunal marine molluscs. Shells of species within this class range in length 0.5–18 cm (0.20–7.09 in). Members of the order Dentaliida tend to be larger than those of the order Gadilida.
An orthocone is the long, cone-shaped shell belonging to several species of ancient nautiloid cephalopod—the prehistoric ancestors of today's marine cephalopod mollusks, including the cuttlefishes, nautili, octopi and squids. During the 18th and 19th centuries, all such shells discovered were given the "catch-all" name Orthoceras, thus creating a wastebasket taxon. However, it is now known that many species, genera and families of nautiloids developed or retained this form of shell.
Orthocerida, also known as the Michelinocerida, is an order of extinct orthoceratoid cephalopods that lived from the Early Ordovician possibly to the Late Triassic. A fossil found in the Caucasus suggests they may even have survived until the Early Cretaceous, and the Eocene fossil Antarcticeras is sometimes considered a descendant of the orthocerids although this is disputed. They were most common however from the Ordovician to the Devonian.
A whorl is a single, complete 360° revolution or turn in the spiral or whorled growth of a mollusc shell. A spiral configuration of the shell is found in numerous gastropods, but it is also found in shelled cephalopods including Nautilus, Spirula and the large extinct subclass of cephalopods known as the ammonites.
The Bactritida are a small order of more or less straight-shelled (orthoconic) cephalopods that first appeared during the Emsian stage of the Devonian period with questionable origins in the Pragian stage before 409 million years ago, and persisted until the Carnian pluvial event in the upper middle Carnian stage of the Triassic period. They are considered ancestors of the ammonoids, as well as of the coleoids.
The hooktooth shark, is a weasel shark of the family Hemigaleidae, the only extant member of the genus Chaenogaleus, but there is an extinct species, Chaenogaleus affinis. The hooktooth shark is found in the tropical Indo-West Pacific oceans between latitudes 30° N and 10° S, including the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, and Java and Sulawesi in Indonesia, from the surface to a depth of 59 meters. It can reach a length of 1 meter. It is considered a vulnerable species. The Hooktooth shark prey items are small fishes, cephalopods, and crustaceans
The Ellesmerocerida is an order of primitive cephalopods belonging to the subclass Nautiloidea with a widespread distribution that lived during the Late Cambrian and Ordovician.
The Oncocerida comprise a diverse group of generally small nautiloid cephalopods known from the Middle Ordovician to the Mississippian, in which the connecting rings are thin and siphuncle segments are variably expanded. At present the order consists of some 16 families, a few of which, such as the Oncoceratidae, Brevicoceratidae, and Acleistoceratidae contain a fair number of genera each while others like the Trimeroceratidae and Archiacoceratidae are represented by only two or three.
Acanthonautilus is an extinct genus in the nautilid family Solenochildae (Aipocerataceae) from the Upper Mississippian of North America and equivalent strata in Europe, first described by Foord in 1896.
Tetrapleuroceras is an extinct prehistoric nautiloid from the Lower Permian of the Urals in Russia. Nautilids are a type of nautiloid, a subclass of shelled cephalopods that were once diverse and numerous but now only represented by Nautilus and Allonautilus
The cephalopods have a long geological history, with the first nautiloids found in late Cambrian strata.
Shelbyoceras is a genus of Cambrian monoplacophora which was one of the genera mistaken for a cephalopod, since the characteristics differentiating monoplacophora from cephalopods are few. Shelbyoceras was reclassified based on a depressed groove that forms a band around the shell, which is similar to a feature seen in Hypseloconus. The septa in this genus are either closely or irregularly spaced.
Ommastrephinae is a subfamily of squids under the family Ommastrephidae.
References
- The Paleobiology Database Aipocerataceae entry
- List of cephalopod genera, J.J. Sepkoski.
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