''Foerstellites'' is a genus of

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 ...

cephalopod A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head ...

s from North America, belonging to the family

Endoceratidae Endoceratidae is a family of large to very large straight shelled nautiloid cephalopods belonging to the order Endocerida that lived during the Middle and Late Ordovician. They include the largest known Paleozoic invertebrates, represented by '' ...

, in which the

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 ...

takes up the entire apex. ''Foestellites'', named by Kobayashi, 1940, is based on the apical part of the conch, or shell, which expands rapidly as septa are added. Not a true nanno type, since the siphuncle is not truly swollen at the apex. Probably the apical end of ''

Cameroceras ''Cameroceras'' ("chambered horn") is a genus of extinct, giant orthoconic cephalopod that lived mainly during the Ordovician period. It first appears during the middle Ordovician, around 470 million years ago, and was a fairly common component o ...

'' or '' Vaginoceras''.

References

* Flower, Rousseau H.1958. Some Chazyan and Mohawkian Endoceratida. Jour of Paleontology, V.32, n3, pp433–458, May 1958 * Teichert, C. 1964. Endoceratoidea, Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, part K. Geological Society of America and Univ. Kansas Press. Prehistoric nautiloid genera {{paleo-nautiloidea-stub