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Meniscoceras
''Meniscoceras'' is a straight and slender Chazyan endocerid described by Rousseau Flower in 1941 The genus was originally included in the Proterocameroceratidae (Flower, 1955) but later (Flower, 1976) placed with its predecessor, ''Najaceras'', in the Najaceratidae. The siphuncle in ''Mensicoceras'' is large with short septal necks and thin connecting rings. Endocones are vertically asymmetric. The central cavity is dorsally concave where a broad dorsal process is formed in which is said to contain a pair of dorso-lateral blades, and flat ventrally. ''Mensicoceras'' from the Chazy and the earlier ''Najaceras'' from the Whiterock age are similar in having a longitudual process formed along the inner dorsal side of the siphuncle around which the endocones form, but differ in details such as with the central opening. On that basis the two have been separated into their own family, the Najaceratidae (Flower 1971,1976). The ''Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology The ''Treati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proterocameroceratidae
The ''Proterocameroceratidae'' were the first of the Endocerida. They began early in the Ordovician with ''Proendoceras'' or similar genus which had developed endocones, replacing the diaphragms of the ellesmerocerid ancestor. Proterocameroceratids are long, straight or gently curved with a generally narrow siphuncle along the ventral margin. Septal necks are short, never quite reaching the previous septum and may vary in length ontogenically within a species. Connecting rings are thick and layered. Endocones are simple, especially in early forms but may be complex with secondary structures in later forms. The Proterocameroceratidae gave rise to the Piloceratidae early on, and later to the Manchuroceratidae and Chihlioceratidae, from which the Allotrioceratidae are derived, and later yet possibly to the Emmonsoceratidae and Najaceratidae. The Piloceratidae in turn may have given rise to the Endoceratidae although a proterocameroceratid ancestor remains possible. Proterocamerocer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Najaceras
''Najaceras'' is a genus of straight, slender endocerid known only from the Whiterockian age Oil Creek Limestone of Oklahoma, introduced and named by Rousseau Flower in 1971 and further described by him in 1976. ''Najaceras'' is characterized by a longitudinal mound of material that runs forward from the apical region along the inside of the top of the siphuncle known as a dorsal process. This process, which is somewhat broad in aspect, is concave ventrally. The opening between the dorsal process and the endocone forms a dorsally concave crescent shape. The process is bisected in the lower port by which is known as a blade which bifurcates upwardly from about the middle. The genus ''Najaceras'' is based on ''Najaceras triangulatum'' (Flower, 1971) which comes from the Oil Creek Limestone on West Spring Creek, 3 miles east of Pooleville, Oklahoma. The holotype and paratype are at the U.S. National Museum. Two other species from the same area have been identified and named: ''N. b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ordovician
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and System (geology), system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era (geology), Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. The Ordovician, named after the Celtic Britons, Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same Rock (geology), rock beds in North Wales in the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively. Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed Stratum, strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Union of Geological Sciences, Intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chazyan
The Chazy Reef Formation is a mid-Ordovician limestone deposit in northeastern North America. It consists of some of the oldest reef systems built by a community of organisms rather than the deposit of a limited range of similar organisms, such as Stromatolite mounds deposited by ancient cyanobacteria. The reef structure was formed largely by cryptostome and trepostome bryozoa, some of the oldest known bryozoans, but corals made an early appearance, and stromatoporoids. The formation is named for the small town of Chazy, New York, where the reef was noted by James Hall in ''Palaeontology of New York'' (vol. I, 1847) and the fossils first studied by the Canadian paleontologist Elkanah Billings (1858, 1859). The reef extends from Tennessee to Quebec and Newfoundland, but its most easily studied outcropping is at Goodsell Ridge, Isle La Motte, the northernmost island in Lake Champlain; there, gentle uplift has tilted the sediments: the bedding planes now dip slightly to the north ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endocerida
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 . The related ''Cameroceras'' is anecdotally reported to have reached lengths approaching , 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. Morphology Endocerids had a relatively small body chamber as well as a proportionally large siphuncle, which in some genera reached nearly half the shell diameter. This suggests that much of the visceral mass may have been housed within the siphuncle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rousseau Flower
Rousseau Hayner Flower (1913–1988) was an extremely prolific 20th century paleontologist, known for his eccentric personality. Career Although trained as an entomologist, and a specialist in dragonflies and orthopterans, Flower began studying paleontology in the middle of the 1930s. He became an expert in North American cephalopods of the Devonian period as well as the stratigraphy of the early Paleozoic era. His main field was the nautiloids, which he studied intensely, often focusing on life habits and theoretical aspects of paleobiology, but he also penned many papers on fossil corals and other invertebrates. Flower described several hundred new fossil species and over 100 new genera. Eccentricities In the paleontology community, Flower's colorful behavior earned him admirers and enemies—whom he would occasionally "thank" in the acknowledgement sections of his papers or, in one case, in the name of a fossil species. His antics included mocking the alleged low-s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siphuncle
The siphuncle is a strand of tissue passing longitudinally through the shell of a cephalopod mollusk. Only cephalopods with chambered shells have siphuncles, such as the extinct ammonites and belemnites, and the living nautiluses, cuttlefish, and ''Spirula''. In the case of the cuttlefish, the siphuncle is indistinct and connects all the small chambers of that animal's highly modified shell; in the other cephalopods it is thread-like and passes through small openings in the septa (walls) dividing the camerae (chambers). Some older studies have used the term siphon for the siphuncle, though this naming convention is uncommon in modern studies to prevent confusion with a mollusc organ of the same name. Function The siphuncle is used primarily in emptying water from new chambers as the shell grows. To perform this task, the cephalopod increases the saltiness of the blood in the siphuncle, and the water moves from the more dilute chamber into the blood through osmosis. At the sam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whiterockian
The Whiterockian, often referred to simply as the Whiterock, is an earliest or lowermost stage of the Middle Ordovician. Although the Whiterockian or Whiterock Stage refers mainly to the early Middle Ordovician in North America, it is often used in the older literature in a global sense. The Whitetrock Stage was introduced by Cooper and Cooper (in Cooper, 1956, p. 6–7) "as a post-Canadian – pre-Chazyan chrono-stratographic unit" based on strata "in the Monitor and Antelope Ranges, flanking Antelope Valley, and in the Toquima Range of central Nevada", referred to as the Antelope Valley Limestone. The strato-type section in Whiterock Canyon in the northern Monitor Range and reference section at Meiklejohn Peak, Bare Mountain Quad. Nev. both show the boundary between the middle Ordovician Whiterock and underlying (mostly Canadian) Ibex series lies between the conodont ''Oepikodus evae'', below, and ''Tripodus laevis'', above, at the start of the ''Isograptus victoria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Treatise On Invertebrate Paleontology
The ''Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology'' (or ''TIP'') published by the Geological Society of America and the University of Kansas Press, is a definitive multi-authored work of some 50 volumes, written by more than 300 paleontologists, and covering every phylum, class, order, family, and genus of fossil and extant (still living) invertebrate animals. The prehistoric invertebrates are described as to their taxonomy, morphology, paleoecology, stratigraphic and paleogeographic range. However, taxa with no fossil record whatsoever have just a very brief listing. Publication of the decades-long ''Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology'' is a work-in-progress; and therefore it is not yet complete: For example, there is no volume yet published regarding the post-Paleozoic era caenogastropods (a molluscan group including the whelk and Common periwinkle, periwinkle). Furthermore, every so often, previously published volumes of the ''Treatise'' are revised. Evolution of the proje ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nautiloids
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 speciose, 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). Only a handful of rare coiled species, the nautiluses, survive to the present day. In a broad sense, "nautiloid" refers to a major cephalopod subclass or collection of subclasses (Nautiloidea ''sensu lato''). Nautiloids are typically considered one of three main groups of cephalopods, along with the extinct ammonoids (ammonites) and living coleoids (such as squid, octopus, and kin). While ammonoids and coleoids are monophyletic clades with exclusive ancestor-descendant rela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ordovician Cephalopods
The Ordovician ( ) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. The Ordovician, named after the Welsh tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in North Wales in the Cambrian and Silurian systems, respectively. Lapworth recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian systems, and placed them in a system of their own. The Ordovician received international approval in 1960 (forty years after Lapworth's death), when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress. Life continued to flourish during the Ordovician as it did in the earlier Cambr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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