Heteromorphs

[Architeuthoceras]

Great fossil Rick.

Nice to see those torticones turn into gyrocones, some of these heteromorphs are crazy.

 

[POD-L]

heteromorphs

Ok, now here it goes into a helical phase

 

[Architeuthoceras]

Crazier

 

[POD-L]

Yes , we found a few of these which we thought were Glyps and when we prepped them discovered they turned into Didymoceras-like critters. They could be dimorphic pairs with the male being a small Glyp and the female being larger with room for egg masses?

 

[Architeuthoceras]

Do they both have the torticonic initial whorls, then open up, then go back to an open helical shape? Or do they have a different adult shape?

 

[POD-L]

We have only found a few with the final helical sections, most are just the torticone and gyrcone, so it may be an artifact of the weakest section being where the helical part begins.

 

[Hajar]

Fine specimens POD-L.

 

[POD-L]

heteromorph

Here is a fat little Clioschaphites from Montana

 

[Hajar]

That's a lovely chunky specimen with fine sutures. How big?

 

[POD-L]

3cm X 3cm

 

[Hajar]

Saw these today in the preview of the new palaeo wing in the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

 

[Terri]

So cool...hard to imagine how these things got around.

 

[Cuddlycuttlefsh]

That's exactly what I thought when I first looked at some shell morphology diagrams.

 

[Terri]

I should have re-read this thread before commenting, there are at least some answers and interesting papers on the first few pages of the thread! Still....

 

[Hajar]

Here's the story of 3D reconstruction of mode of life for the heteromorph Dissimilites (newspaper hype already picked up by Octobot): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098300412001264?v=s5

Section 4.4. "3D visualisation of ontogenetical stages" doesn't state how the modes of life were reconstructed (perhaps that's in the paper in press?). I'm surprised to see that Okamoto & Shibata 1997 (see earlier in this thread) is not referenced in the paper.

There's an abstract on computer tomography from this group here: http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2012/EGU2012-283.pdf