Cephalopods are now to have their day. The archaic Orthoceras
lingers on into the Triassic and becomes extinct, but a remarkable
development is now at hand for the more highly organized
descendants of this ancient line. We have noticed that in the
Devonian the sutures of some of the chambered shells become
angled, evolving the Goniatite type. The sutures now become lobed
and corrugated in Ceratites. The process was carried still
farther, and the sutures were elaborately frilled in the great
order of the Ammonites. It was in the Jurassic that the Ammonites
reached their height. No fossils are more abundant or
characteristic of their age. Great banks of their shells formed
beds of limestone in warm seas the world over.
The ammonite stem branched into a most luxuriant variety of forms.
The typical form was closely coiled like a nautilus. In others the
coil was more or less open, or even erected into a spiral. Some
were hook-shaped, and there were members of the order in which the
shell was straight, and yet retained all the internal structures
of its kind. At the end of the Mesozoic the entire tribe of
ammonites became extinct.
The Belemnite (Greek, belemnon, a dart) is a distinctly higher
type of cephalopod which appeared in the Triassic, became numerous
and varied in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, and died out early in
the Tertiary. Like the squids and cuttlefish, of which it was the
prototype, it had an internal calcareous shell. This consisted of
a chambered and siphuncled cone, whose point was sheathed in a
long solid guard somewhat like a dart. The animal carried an ink
sac, and no doubt used it as that of the modern cuttlefish is
used,--to darken the water and make easy an escape from foes.
Belemnites have sometimes been sketched with fossil sepia, or
india ink, from their own ink sacs. In the belemnites and their
descendants, the squids and cuttlefish, the cephalopods made the
radical change from external to the internal shell. They abandoned
the defensive system of warfare and boldly took up the offensive.
No doubt, like their descendants, the belemnites were exceedingly
active and voracious creatures.
FISHES AND AMPHIBIANS. In the Triassic and Jurassic, little
progress was made among the fishes, and the ganoid was still the
leading type. In the Cretaceous the teleosts, or bony fishes, made
their appearance, while ganoids declined toward their present
subordinate place.
The amphibians culminated in the Triassic, some being formidable
creatures as large as alligators. They were still of the primitive
Paleozoic types. Their pygmy descendants of more modern types are
not found until later, salamanders appearing first in the
Cretaceous, and frogs at the beginning of the Cenozoic.
No remains of amphibians have been discovered in the Jurassic. Do
you infer from this that there were none in existence at that
time?
REPTILES OF THE MESOZOIC
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