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 remaining group of ammonoids from the Jurassic up until their extinction.
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.
Rhenanida is an order of scaly placoderms. Unlike most other placoderms, the rhenanids' armor was made up of a mosaic of unfused scales and tubercles. The patterns and components of this "mosaic" correspond to the plates of armor in other, more advanced placoderms, suggesting that the ancestral placoderm had armor made of unfused components, as well.
Greenops is a mid-sized Devonian trilobite of the order Phacopida, subfamily Asteropyginae. They are mainly reported from the mid-Devonian Hamilton Group of upstate New York and southwestern Ontario. A similar-looking trilobite from Morocco is often mis-labelled Greenops. Greenops had schizocroidal eyes, large genal spines and short, sharp spines at the tip of each segment of the pygidium ("tail"). Greenops lived in warm, fairly deep water. In the Hamilton Group of New York, they are found with Eldredgeops, Dipleura and Bellacartwrightia, a trilobite that resembles Greenops but has much larger pygidial spines. In Ontario, they are found in the Widder Formation, which outcrops at Arkona, where they are, by far, the dominant trilobite.
Unquatornoceras is an extinct cephalopod genus from the Late Devonian belonging to the ammonoid order Goniatitida.
The Devonian Mahantango Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland. It is named for the North branch of the Mahantango Creek in Perry and Juniata counties in Pennsylvania. It is a member of the Hamilton Group, along with the underlying the Marcellus Formation Shale. South of Tuscarora Mountain in south central Pennsylvania, the lower members of this unit were also mapped as the Montebello Formation. Details of the type section and of stratigraphic nomenclature for this unit as used by the U.S. Geological Survey are available on-line at the National Geologic Map Database.
Clymenia is a genus in the ammonoid order Clymeniida, restricted to the Upper Devonian, characterized as with all clymeniids by a dorsal siphuncle that runs along the inside of the whorls, unusual for ammonoids.
Dipleura is a genus of trilobites in the order Phacopida. It was described by Green in 1832, and the type species is Dipleura dekayi. The type locality was in the Hamilton Group in New York.
Jovellania is a genus of extinct prehistoric nautiloids from the order Oncocerida known from the Lower Devonian of Europe. Nautiloids form a broad group of shelled cephalopods that were once diverse and numerous but are now represented by only a handful of species in two genera.
Brevicoceras is an extinct nautiloid genus from the order Oncocerida with wide distribution in the Middle Devonian in Eastern North America, Russia and Morocco. Nautiloids form a broad group of shelled cephalopods that were once diverse and numerous but are now represented by only a handful of species in two genera.
Ankyloceras is a genus of Early Devonian cephalopods included in the oncocerid family Karoceratidae. The type species, Ankyloceras nesnayamiense named by Zhuravleva, 1974, comes from Nova Zemlya in Russia. Other species have been found in Japan, Morocco, and Russia.
Clymeniida is an order of ammonoid cephalopods from the Upper Devonian characterized by having an unusual dorsal siphuncle. They measured about 4 cm (1.6 in) in diameter and are most common in Europe, North Africa, and South China but are known from North America and Australia as well.
Peroniceras is an ammonite belonging to the Ammonitida family Collignoniceratidae.
Holopea is an extinct genus of fossil sea snails, Paleozoic gastropod mollusks in the family Holopeidae.
Kosmoclymenia is a genus in the ammonoid order Clymeniida, in the family Kosmoclymeniidae.
Phyllopachyceras is an extinct genus of ammonoid cephalopods belonging to the family Phylloceratidae. These nektonic carnivores lived in the Cretaceous, from Hauterivian to Maastrichtian to age.
Reineckeia is an extinct genus of ammonoid cephalopods belonging to the family Reineckeiidae.
Quasillites is a fossil genus of ostracod from the Devonian and Carboniferous Periods.
The Windom shale or Windom member is a member of the Moscow formation in New York. It preserves fossils going back to the Givetian stage of the middle Devonian. The Windom shale is widely known for its high quality trilobite fossils.
The Taghanic event was an extinction event that occurred about 386 million years ago during the Givetian faunal stage of the Middle Devonian geologic period in the Paleozoic era. It was caused by hypoxia from an anoxic event. The event had a period in which dissolved oxygen in the Earth's oceans was depleted. The Taghanic event caused a very high death rate of corals. The loss of the coral reefs caused a high loss of animals that lived in and around the reefs. The extinction rate has been placed between 28.5 and 36%, making the event the 8th largest extinction event recorded. The reduced oxygen levels resulted from a period of global warming caused by Milankovitch cycles. In the Taghanic event sea levels were higher. After the Taghanic Event, sea life recovered in the Frasnian faunal stage starting 382.7 million years ago. Two other events near this period were the Kellwasser event and the Hangenberg event.
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