Douvilleiceras Ammonite Fossil Sea Shell Prehistoric Cretaceous Collection (4)

Ammonite Fossil Seashell mm 36 x 19 gr 24.1 Douvilleiceras orbignyi Extinct Prehistoric Cephalopods Molluscs Mesozoic Cretaceous Collecting Paleontology Museum.

Pleasant fossil specimen of Ammonite from the Lower Cretaceous, a very particular representative collectible find of excellent quality, with evident anterior and posterior details of the thick ornamental ribs with well-preserved tubercles.
Known as Ammonite "Goat Horn". Only a piece, as in photos.

Douvilleiceras is an extinct Cephalopod Mollusc belonging to the Ammonites. He lived at the end of the Lower Cretaceous (Albian, about 105 million years ago) and his fossil remains were found all over the world, mainly in Europe and the Near East.
The shell of this ammonite was symmetrical, with a flat spiral, with a poor covering of the subsequent turns, of a vaguely globular appearance. The ornamentation consisted of simple but very robust coasts. These coasts brought more or less numerous tubercles that, in the animal alive, were surmounted by long thorns, sometimes partly preserved in the best preserved fossil specimens. The presence of the tubercles gives the lap section a typical polygonal pattern. The size of the shell, on average, was between 5 and 10 centimeters in diameter, although in some species it could exceed twenty centimeters in diameter in the most developed specimens.
The suture line was of an ammonite type, relatively uncomplicated and jagged.
The broad profile of the coil offered considerable resistance to water: for this reason, and due to the presence of tubercles and thorns with a likely defensive function, it is thought that douvilleicerato was an inefficient swimmer. Probably it was a necto-bentonic form (that is a backdrop), a predator of small, not very mobile marine organisms.
Among the best-known species, it is worth mentioning Douvilleiceras mammillatum, of the Lower and Middle Albian.

The Ammonites are an extinct group of Cephalopods, which appeared in the Lower Devonian about 400 million years ago and extinguished at the end of the Cretaceous, together with the Dinosaurs (65 million years ago), leaving no known descendants. Like all cephalopods known this organisms were carnivorous: active predators of marine animals, microphagous (plankton), scavengers, and even cannibals. The shell of ammonites in general has the form of a spiral wound on a plan (although some species, such heteromorphy, have a more complex three-dimensional winding) and it is this feature that has given their name. The appearance infact resembles a coiled horn, like that of a ram (the Egyptian god Amon was commonly depicted as a man with ram's horns). Pliny the Elder described the fossils of these animals ammonis cornua, "horns of Ammon." Often the name of the species of Ammonites ends with -ceras, from a greek word (κέρας) whose meaning is, in fact, "horn" (eg. Pleuroceras etymologically means horn with the coast).
The shell was divided by septa into several rooms, including the clam occupied only the last. The others were used as "air chambers" filled with gas and liquid to control the floating body. The ammonite could well change its depth in a manner similar to the current Nautilus.
Because of their extraordinary variability and distribution in marine sediments around the world the ammonites are considered fossils for excellence and guide-fossils of exceptional value, used for dating in stratigraphy of the sedimentary rocks.
The classification of ammonites is made on the basis of morphology and ornamentation of the shell, and the shape of septa, depending on the suture line.