Lytoceratidae

Lytoceratidae is a taxonomic family of ammonoid cephalopods belonging to the suborder Lytoceratina, characterized by very evolute shells that generally enlarge rapidly, having whorls in contact but mostly overlapping very sightly, or not at all.

Lytoceratidae
Temporal range: Pliensbachian–Cenomanian[1]
Fossil shells of Lytoceras cornucopia from Isère (France), on display at Galerie de paléontologie et d'anatomie comparée in Paris
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Subclass: †Ammonoidea
Order: †Ammonitida
Suborder: †Lytoceratina
Family: †Lytoceratidae
Newmayr, 1875
Subfamilies

See text

Surface ornament may consist of various combinations of straight or crinkled growth lines, flares, constrictions, and, more rarely, plications. Sutures are highly complex and moss-like, but with few major elements. Lateral lobes are widely splayed and blunt, or with obliquely deflected end. The external, ventral, lobe is short.

The Lytoceratinae have a worldwide distribution and a stratigraphic range extending from the middle Lower Jurassic (Pliensbachian) to the early Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian).

Subfamilies

The Lytoceratidae has been divided into four subfamilies, as follows.

Lytoceratids with whorls that bear growth lines or lamellar flares, or both, and in which there are only two lateral lobes in the external suture, on either side, and the dorsal lobe is cruciform (cross like).

Planulate lytoceratids in which whorls and sutures tend to lose lytoceratid character and resemble those of the perisphinctidae.

Plantulate lytoceratids with sutures like those in the Lytoceratinae, but without the dorsal lobe being cruciform.

Lytoceratids with many deep constrictions resulting and capricorns in middle whorls. Outer whorls become more smooth and involute. Capricorn: a shell encircled by blunt, wide spaced ribs separated by subequal rounded interspaces, resembling a goat's horn .

References
  1. "Paleobiology Database - Lytoceratidae". Retrieved 2017-10-19.
  • Arkell, W.J.; Kummel, B.; Wright, C.W. (1957). Mesozoic Ammonoidea. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part L, Mollusca 4. Lawrence, Kansas: Geological Society of America and University of Kansas Press.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.