Belemnoidea

Belemnoids are an extinct group of marine cephalopod, very similar in many ways to the modern squid. Like them, the belemnoids possessed an ink sac, but, unlike the squid, they possessed ten arms of roughly equal length, and no tentacles. The name "belemnoid" comes from the Ancient Greek word βέλεμνον (bélemnon), meaning "dart, arrow", and είδος (eídos), meaning "form".

Belemnoidea

Ghedoghedo · 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
Also called
belemnitePBDB
Sits inside
ColeoideaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Cephalopoda
Life habit
nektonicPBDB, for Cephalopoda
Motility
fast-movingPBDB, for Cephalopoda
Vision
well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
Environment
marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda

Time the record covers

At least 220 million years on record.

The record covers at least 323.4 Mya to 103.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 335.4 Mya to 99.5 Mya.

Carboniferous — about 1 of 101 occurrencesCarboniferousPermian — about 0 of 101 occurrencesEarly Triassic — about 0 of 101 occurrencesMiddle Triassic — about 0 of 101 occurrencesLate Triassic — about 0 of 101 occurrencesEarly Jurassic — about 8 of 101 occurrencesEarly JurassicMiddle Jurassic — about 73 of 101 occurrencesLate Jurassic — about 10 of 101 occurrencesEarly Cretaceous — about 9 of 101 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 0 of 101 occurrences340–332 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences332–324 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences324–316 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences209–201 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences201–193 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences193–185 Mya — about 3 occurrences185–177 Mya — about 4 occurrences177–168 Mya — about 3 occurrences168–160 Mya — about 74 occurrences160–152 Mya — about 6 occurrences152–144 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences144–136 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences136–127 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences127–119 Mya — about 2 occurrences119–111 Mya — about 3 occurrences111–103 Mya — about 2 occurrences103–95 Mya — about 1 occurrence323.4 Mya103.3 Mya340 Mya95 Mya

101 occurrences of Belemnoidea on record, most of them in the Middle Jurassic. 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

101 occurrences

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.

Found in

16 formations

Chari — 23.67°N, 69.00°EChari — 23.50°N, 70.50°EOsgodby — 54.25°N, 0.36°WNishinakayama — 34.25°N, 131.00°ETendaguru — 9.70°S, 39.24°EScarborough — 54.25°N, 0.36°WGrès verts helvétiques — 46.01°N, 6.35°EFaringdon Sand — 51.65°N, 1.58°WKatrol — 23.50°N, 70.50°EMarnes à Toxaster — 38.40°N, 9.22°WCalcaires et marnes à Choffatelles — 38.40°N, 9.22°WMangapokia — 41.00°S, 175.99°EWhisky Bay — 64.17°S, 57.75°WKotick Point — 64.17°S, 57.75°WChainman Shale — 38.83°N, 113.81°WOxford Clay — 52.60°N, 0.21°WApón — 10.48°N, 72.42°W

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The named rock units Belemnoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 10 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Belemnoidea and its relatives

Middle Jurassic

Where Belemnoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Jurassic.

Found in the same rock

177 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 25 sites for Belemnoidea, 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

16 references

Each of the 101 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. 4 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Belemnoidea

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Belemnoidea 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 itColeoidea through timeFormations of the Middle JurassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Hyatt 1884)