Dimeroceratoidea, formerly Dimerocerataceae, is one of six
superfamilies in the
goniatitid suborder
Tornoceratina
Tornoceratina is one of two suborders included in the Goniatitida, characterized by generally involute, subdiscoidal shells and by sutures in which the ventral ones are undivided.
Sutural lobes increase in number during the course of life of th ...
which lived During the Devonian. Five families are included, the
Dimeroceratidae being the type family.
Gonitites, to which they belong, are primitive
ammonites
Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) ...
''
sensu lato
''Sensu'' is a Latin word meaning "in the sense of". It is used in a number of fields including biology, geology, linguistics, semiotics, and law. Commonly it refers to how strictly or loosely an expression is used in describing any particular co ...
'', extinct shelled
cephalopod
A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda (Greek plural , ; "head-feet") such as a squid, octopus, cuttlefish, or nautilus. These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head ...
s more closely related to living animals like
squid
True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fitting t ...
s and
octopodes
An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, ...
than to similarly shelled
nautiloids
Nautiloids are a group of marine cephalopods (Mollusca) which originated in the Late Cambrian and are represented today by the living ''Nautilus'' and ''Allonautilus''. Fossil nautiloids are diverse and speciose, with over 2,500 recorded species. ...
such as the modern genus ''
Nautilus
The nautilus (, ) is a pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina.
It comprises six living species in t ...
''.
References
Taxonomy GONIAT-online10/28/10
Paleobiology Database - Dimerocerataceae10/28/10
Saunders, Work, and Nikoleava 1999. Evolution of Complexity in Paleozoic Ammonoid Sutures, Science Magazine
Tornoceratina
Goniatitida superfamilies
Devonian first appearances
Devonian extinctions
{{Goniatitida-stub