Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Ammonoidea


We just learned about the Flapjack Octopus.

Another type of cephalopod is the Ammonoidea, also called ammonite.

These cephalopods look a lot like a nautilus in their spiraled shell, but because of the way their body parts are inside of the shell, they are actually a lot like a squid, octopus or cuttlefish.

The spiral shaped ammonoidea get their name from a scientist a long time ago that thought the shells looked like ram's horns.
In Egyptian mythology, Ammon was shown in artwork wearing ram's horns, so the scientist Pliny the Elder named these cephalopods "ammonis cornua" which means "horns of Ammon".

Ammonites can come in many different shapes, like having sharp points on the outside of it's shell, or even shaped more like a corkscrew.

The ammonites are not around anymore, they all went extinct many years ago.






(from: wikipedia - ammonoidea)


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