| Prolobitinae | |
|---|---|
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Cephalopoda |
| Subclass: | † Ammonoidea |
| Order: | † Goniatitida |
| Family: | † Prolobitidae |
| Subfamily: | †Prolobitinae Hyatt 1884 |
| Genera | |
Prolobitinae is one of two subfamilies of the Prolobitidae family, a member of the Goniatitida order. They are an extinct group of ammonoid, which are shelled cephalopods related to squids, belemnites, octopodes, and cuttlefish, and more distantly to the nautiloids.
Prolobitidae is a family of middle and upper Devonian ammonoid cephalopods currently included in the goniatitid suborder Tornoceratina and superfamily Dimeroceratoidea, but previously included in the ancestral Anarcestida.
Family is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy; it is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as being the "walnut family".
In biology, extinction is the termination of an organism or of a group of organisms (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" after a period of apparent absence.
