The Role of Ammonites in the Mesozoic Marine Food Web Revealed by Jaw Preservation

@article{Kruta2011TheRO,
  title={The Role of Ammonites in the Mesozoic Marine Food Web Revealed by Jaw Preservation},
  author={Isabelle Kruta and Neil H. Landman and Isabelle Rouget and Fabrizio Cecca and Paul Tafforeau},
  journal={Science},
  year={2011},
  volume={331},
  pages={70 - 72}
}
Analysis of x-ray microtomographic reconstructions of ammonite fossils reveal their feeding habits. Ammonites are prominent in macroevolutionary studies because of their abundance and diversity in the fossil record, but their paleobiology and position in the marine food web are not well understood due to the lack of preserved soft tissue. We present three-dimensional reconstructions of the buccal apparatus in the Mesozoic ammonite Baculites with the use of synchrotron x-ray microtomography… 
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119 Citations
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119 Citations

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The Feeding Habits of Ammonites
TLDR
This is the first study to use synchrotron x-ray microtomographic techniques to investigate the paleobiology of ammonites and offer some insight into how—and what—one Late Cretaceous ammonite ate.
Pelagic palaeoecology: the importance of recent constraints on ammonoid palaeobiology and life history
TLDR
Various lines of evidence suggest that different groups of ammonoids had quite different ecologies, but shell shape alone can only give upper constraints on ammonoid capabilities, a matter that needs to be considered when interpreting their diversity and evolutionary history.
Evolution of habitat depth in the Jurassic–Cretaceous ammonoids
  • K. Moriya
  • Geography, Environmental Science
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
  • 2015
TLDR
Ammonoids, a group of cephalopods with external chambered shells, arose in the early Devonian and went extinct at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary, and their biological nature is poorly understood because of the lack of soft body fossils and close modern relatives.
Evidence for semi-sessile early juvenile life history in Cretaceous ammonites
First direct evidence of ammonoid ovoviviparity
TLDR
The first recorded ammonite embryonic shell clusters preserved with calcified embryonic aptychi in situ within the body chambers of mature macroconch shells of the Early Aptian (Early Cretaceous) ammonite Sinzovia sazonovae support the idea that the clusters are egg masses, which developed inside ammonite body chambers.
Ammonite habitat revealed via isotopic composition and comparisons with co-occurring benthic and planktonic organisms
TLDR
A rare co-occurrence of exquisitely well-preserved ammonites and planktonic and benthic organisms is used to constrain depth preferences of three common ammonite families by comparing the oxygen and carbon isotopic signatures of these taxa.
Stable isotope data (δ18O, δ13C) of the ammonite genus Simbirskites — implications for habitat reconstructions of extinct cephalopods
Ammonoid Habitats and Life History
The current knowledge about the ammonoid/habitat relation is reviewed and in part newly interpreted. The autecology of ammonoids, such as ontogeny and habitat, based on morphological and geochemical…
Isotope Signature of Ammonoid Shells
  • K. Moriya
  • Geography, Environmental Science
  • 2015
Geochemical analyses of ammonoid shells provide an independent and objective data set to evaluate life and habitat of the animal. This uniformitarian consideration, in combination with functional…
Ammonites on the Brink of Extinction: Diversity, Abundance, and Ecology of the Order Ammonoidea at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) Boundary
We examined the stratigraphic distribution of ammonites at a total of 29 sites around the world in the last 0.5 myr of the Maastrichtian. We demarcated this interval using biostratigraphy,…
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