Indie Squid Kid

Parapuzosia seppenradensis. (replica), originally uploaded by muzina_shanghai.

I’m still in a paleontological mood after yesterday’s big news, so here is another big fossil…literally. Parapuzosia seppenradensis is desmoceratid ammonite from Late Cretaceous Germany, and it is the largest known ammonite species. An incomplete specimen found in 1895 had a diameter of 1.95 meters (~6 ft), and in life it is estimated to have been 2.55 meters (over 8 ft) across.

As big as P. seppenradensis was, it was by no means the largest prehistoric cephalopod. That honor goes to the giant Ordovician orthoconic (i.e. straight-shelled) nautiloid Cameroceras, which may have been as much 11 meters long (~36 ft). Of course that is the topic for another post…

Tags: ammonite, Flickr Friday, fossil, paleontology, Parapuzosia, science!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 8:57 pm and is filed under ammonites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.