Everybody knows how oysters make pearls-- a bit of sand or grit slips through the protective barrier of their outer shell, irritating the mollusk's body, and the invertebrate encircles the invader ...

After the End-Permian extinction 250 million years ago, ammonoids diversified and recovered 10 to 30 times faster than previous estimates. The surprising discovery raises questions about ...

Ammonoids, ancestors of today's octopus, squid and cuttlefish, bobbed and jetted their way through the oceans for around 340 million years beginning long before the age of the dinosaurs. If you look ...

A few weeks ago, during a trip to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Birch Aquarium, I bumped into a nautilus. More or less. Admittedly there was an aquarium pane and many gallons of water ...

For 300 million years, they were the ultimate survivors. They successfully negotiated three mass extinctions, only to die out eventually at the end of the Cretaceous along with the dinosaurs: ...

April 13 (UPI) --Ammonoids, an ancient group of mollusks, used the wavy lines found inside their shells to fine-tune their buoyancy, according to a new study. Prior to their disappearance at the end ...

Researchers previously focused on the roles of these complex structures in resisting pressure on the shell, but new researchers provide evidence for a different hypothesis. Complex sutures, they found ...