Nautiloid
Nautiloids are a group of marine cephalopods (Mollusca) which originated in the Late Cambrian and are represented today by the living Nautilus and Allonautilus. Fossil nautiloids are diverse and speciose, with over 2,500 recorded species. They flourished during the early Paleozoic era, when they constituted the main predatory animals. Early in their evolution, nautiloids developed an extraordinary diversity of shell shapes, including coiled morphologies and giant straight-shelled forms (orthocones). Only a handful of rare coiled species, the nautiluses, survive to the present day.
| Nautiloids Temporal range: Late Cambrian – Recent | |
|---|---|
| Nautilus pompilius | |
| the endocerid Cameroceras, shown feeding on the tarphycerid Aphetoceras, while a quartet of ellesmerocerid Cyclostomiceras swim by. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Cephalopoda |
| Subclass: | Nautiloidea Agassiz, 1847 |
| Major subdivisions | |
| |
In a broad sense, "nautiloid" refers to a major cephalopod subclass or collection of subclasses (Nautiloidea sensu lato). Nautiloids are typically considered one of three main groups of cephalopods, along with the extinct ammonoids (ammonites) and living coleoids (such as squid, octopus, and kin). While ammonoids and coleoids are monophyletic clades with exclusive ancestor-descendant relationships, this is not the case for nautiloids. Instead, nautiloids are a paraphyletic grade of various early-diverging cephalopod lineages, including the ancestors of ammonoids and coleoids. Some authors prefer a narrower definition of Nautiloidea (Nautiloidea sensu stricto), as a singular subclass including only those cephalopods which are close to living nautiluses.