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Report of the Committee on Paleoecology, 1936-1937; Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Division of Geology and Geography, National Research Council, May 1, 1937 (1937) / Chapter Skim
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Paleoecology of the Paleozoic Cephalopods - A. K. Miller and W. M. Furnish
Pages 54-65

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From page 54...
... That is, all three of the existing nautiloid species live only in the shallow waters about the shores and coral reefs of the South Pacific from the Malay region to the Philippine and Fiji islands; their empty shells, however, drift to such remote places as Japan, Africa, and ttew South Wales. Obviously the character of the sediments in which drifting shells finally come to rest can yield no information in regard to the ecology (or paleoecology)
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From page 55...
... Forbes (1844, 1854) has called attention to the fact that in shallow waters shells present more varied colors and more distinct color designs.
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From page 56...
... Presumably we should picture these animals as rather inactive or sluggish creatures which spent most of their lives in the shallow waters on the flanks of the bioherms where we find their remains today• However, the large cephalopod fauna described from the near shore facies of the Upper Ordovician of the Northwest probably did not live precisely where we find its remains today. That is, most of the cephalopods described from the Wind River Mountains and the Black Hills, for example, came from what appear to be littoral deposits, and the shells are almost invariably somewhat worn and broken.
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From page 57...
... Therefore forms of this type probably rested on the bottom of the sea like certain gastropods with the aperture of the shell down; of, if the weight of the animal was more than counterbalanced by the buoyancy of the gas in the phragmacone, when the creatures came to rest they may have been suspended in the water head downwards like modern SpirulaV Rapidly expanding conchs form large apertures which facilitate crawling, whereas constricted apertures interfere with the protrusion of the body from the conch and therefore tend to retard crawling. Since many of the breviconic nautiloids possessed rapidly expanding conchs which only at maturity developed constricted apertures, it seems likely that during adolescence these creatures were primarily crawlers, but that as maturity was approached and the number of camerae increased the shell tended to be used more and more as a float and the tentacles were protruded almost exclusively for the purpose of obtaining food and not for locomotion.
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From page 58...
... Perna was correct when.in 1915 he assumed "fttr evolute Goniatiten eine nektoplanktonische Lebenweise, filr involute eine benthonische." , .
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From page 59...
... Relatively recently Troedssdn (1926) has stated that in "several horizons of the' Baltic Orthbceras limestone the bedding plane.s,,are crowded with straight cephalopods thrown toge'ther parallel to each other..
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From page 60...
... In the Coffeyville formation of Oklahoma the camerae of the cephalopods, which occur in calcareous concretions, are in many cases filled with black viscous petroleum, and amraonoids which contain petroleum have been found in the Union Valley sandstone of Oklahoma. In many places the faunas of Late Paleozoic carbonaceous shales are composed almost entirely of goniatites.
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From page 61...
... It seems apparent that in general fusulinids and ammonoids represent distinct facies and that the few exceptions are probably due to specimens being washed into an environment in which normally they did not live. Nautiloids also are rare in Late Paleozoic goniatite faunas and are generally limited to a few ubiquitous types like Metac^oce^ras and Coloceras.
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From page 62...
... 1931. Oberdevonische Anaptychen in situ und fiber die Erhaltung von Chitin-Substanzen: Senckenbergiana, Bd.
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From page 63...
... 1930. Diskussion /of Hermann Schmidt's paper entitled Uber die Bewegungsweise der Schalencephalopoden^ t Pal, Zeitschrc, Bd.
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Key Terms

  • shallow water
  • shallow waters
  • late paleozoic
  • modern nautilus
  • fleshy bodies

  • fossil nautiloids
  • empty shells
  • calcareous concretions
  • cross section
  • drifting shells

  • fossil cephalopods
  • paleozoic cephalopods
  • color patterns
  • straight cephalopods
  • tites occur

  • goniatites occur
  • found outside
  • carboniferous limestone
  • called attention
  • upper ordovician

  • species represented
  • rapidly expanding
  • close association
  • die bewegungsweise
  • expanding conchs

  • bewegungsweise der
  • uppermost devonian
  • constricted apertures
  • relatively shallow
  • nautiloids occur


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