Ammonites often have artistic, mythological and religious associations, though the reality is much more down to earth. They are cephalopods, represented in today's seas by such animals as nautiluses, octopus, squid and cuttlefish. Since they are extinct, it is only through the study of their fossils and by observing their living relatives that we can piece together something of their anatomy, their habitat and their ecology. One recent significant shift in understanding the lifestyle of these animals has been the move to use active cephalopods like the octopus rather than the nautilus for comparison. In "Ammonites", Neale Monks and Phil Palmer pool their expertise into recreating the life and times of the ammonite. They describe the evolution and natural history of ammonites, covering ammonite shell, the ammonite animal itself, ammonite biology - design, lifestyle and extinction - and briefly look at ammonite taxonomy. With a gallery of photographs to support the text, this should be a key book to anyone interested in fossils.

 

This book is part of a book series called Living Past .

There are 160 pages in this book. This book was published 2002 by The Natural History Museum .

Neale Monks is a palaeontologist at The Natural History Museum in London, and has written a number of papers on the evolution of beteromorph ammonites. Phil Palmer was a scientist at The Natural History Museum in London until his retirement, and has written extensively on fossil molluses and stratigraphy.

This book has the following chapters: Introduction; An introduction to Ammonites; Ammonite fossils; Ammonite form and function; Aspects of ammonite biology; Ammonite taxonomy and classification; The extinction of ammonites; Collecting ammonites; Further reading; Glossary; Index.