A follow up on the Fossil I found

I mentioned finding a fossil in my last post on the Flinders Ranges, but I wasn't sure, so I contacted the Australia Museum Fossil Expert.

They returned to my mail a few days ago, saying that I had discovered an ammonite fossil. I was ecstatic to learn that it was indeed a fossil. Discovering a fossil is like finding a needle in a haystack, therefore it's a fantastic experience.

Ammonites:

What are Ammonites:

Ammonoids, a big and diversified group of organisms that emerged during the Devonian period, which began around 416 million years ago, are known as ammonites. Ammonoids are related to other cephalopods like squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, and they were the forerunners of the contemporary nautilus.

Ammonites are cephalopods with shells that died about 66 million years ago. They can be found all over the planet. They are squid-like tentacles protrude from ammonites' unique multichambered shells.

Appearance and behavior:

Ammonites came in a variety of sizes and forms. The shells of certain ammonites were long and straight, while others possessed helix-shaped shells. The majority of species, on the other hand, possessed coiled shells with progressively bigger chambers separated by thin septa.

As the animals grew older, they developed new shell material, but their bodies remained in the outer chamber. The shell was protected from being crushed by the walls that divided each chamber. Sutures, which were complicated lines that joined them to the shell, were used to connect them.

The many chambers in these cephalopods' shells most likely assisted them in gliding across the planet's warm, shallow oceans. The air was pumped into the inside chambers of the shell by a thin tubelike structure called a siphuncle, which experts believe helped give buoyancy and transport ammonites through the water.

Fossil evidence indicates they had sharp, beaklike jaws to snare prey such as plankton, crustaceans, and other ammonites.

Evolution and Extinction:

Their shell structures evolved over millions of years, becoming smaller, more densely coiled, and more complicated. Simple suture lines were traced across the shells of early ammonites.

66 million years ago, during the planet's most recent mass extinction event, the ammonites died out. A 7.5-mile-wide asteroid blasted into Earth in the latter days of the Cretaceous, wiping out more than three-quarters of all species on the planet. Some scientists believe the ammonites didn't survive the aftermath because their main food source, sea plankton, suddenly declined.

Dictionary:

Septa: The ammonite's shell was divided into chambers separated by walls known as septa

Cretaceous: A geological period that lasted from 145 to 66 million years ago

Devonian: A geological period spanning between 419.2 million and 358.9 million years ago.