Aenigmatoceras
Aenigmatoceras is a genus of ammonite cephalopods from the Carboniferous of Russia. It is tentatively placed within the family Cravenoceratidae based on similarities with Tympanoceras.

Apokryltaros · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CravenoceratinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Goniatitida
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda
Time the record covers
At most 500 thousand years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 321.8 Mya and 321.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
16 occurrences of Aenigmatoceras on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
16 occurrences- Carboniferous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Aenigmatoceras and its relatives
CarboniferousWhere Aenigmatoceras and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.
Found in the same rock
53 taxa- Proshumardites karpinskii16 sites
- Stenopronorites uralensis9 sites
- Baschkirites planus7 sites
- Bashkortoceras artum6 sites
- Phillipsoceras6 sites
- Alurites postcostatus5 sites
- Ramosites magnus5 sites
- Reticuloceras5 sites
- Paraschartymites repens4 sites
- Schartymites chumazensis4 sites
- Syngastrioceras supinum4 sites
- Alurites costatus3 sites
- Bashkortoceras kugarchense3 sites
- Brevikites densus3 sites
- Phillipsoceras alpharhipaeum3 sites
- Phillipsoceras gammarhipaeum3 sites
- Phillipsoceras remissum3 sites
- Alurites subcarinatus2 sites
- Fallacites portentosus2 sites
- Paradimorphoceras2 sites
- Phillipsoceras betarhipaeum2 sites
- Reticuloceras devium2 sites
- Retites obscurus2 sites
- Stenoglaphyrites intraevolutus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 16 sites for Aenigmatoceras, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 16 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Aenigmatoceras
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Apokryltaros
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aenigmatoceras was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCravenoceratinae through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Ruzhentsev and Bogoslovskaya 1978