Ammonites are a tale of two textures. The prehistoric cephalopods were composed of fleshy soft tissue (the living bit of the animals) and hard external shells, which, according to a paper published ...

Ammonites are a group of extinct cephalopod mollusks with ribbed spiral shells. They are exceptionally diverse and well known to fossil lovers. Researchers have developed the first biomechanical model ...

A shelled fossil discovered in an amateur’s collection may harbor the first direct evidence of prehistoric sharks eating ammonites some 150 million years ago. The palm-sized ammonite, an extinct ...

Robotic ammonites, evaluated in a university pool, allow researchers to explore questions about how shell shapes affected swimming ability. They found trade-offs between stability in the water and ...

Earth once hosted more than 10,000 species of these ancient marine predators. Find out how they lived, when they vanished, and how much we know about them today. Based on the fossil record, ammonites ...

The muscles and organs of an ammonite — an extinct relative of cuttlefish and squid with coiled shells and tentacles — have been reconstructed in 3D for the first time. The achievement has allowed a ...

If you’ve ever been in a shop that sells fossils — the natural history museum gift shop, the nature store in the mall, and so on — you’ve probably seen an ammonite. Its chambered coils make a distinct ...

The narrower shells, for example, produced less drag and were more stable when moving straight through the water. The wider shells, while making for slower, less energy-efficient travel, could change ...

For a little while, Mosasaurus maximus was my labmate. The sharp-toothed marine predator was an inoffensive neighbor, though – no doubt because only the fossilized bones, coated in beeswax to stop the ...

Ninety-nine million years ago in what's now Myanmar, a glob of tree resin oozed onto a beach. Today, the resulting fossilized lump of amber is giving scientists an astonishing glimpse into life on a ...

In a university swimming pool, scientists and their underwater cameras watch carefully as a coiled shell is released from a pair of metal tongs. The shell begins to move under its own power, giving ...