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Baculites

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Baculites
Temporal range: Upper Cretaceous to Lower Paleocene
SouthDakotaBaculites.jpg
Baculites fossils from South Dakota. Some still have traces of the original nacre (shells).
Scientific classification e
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Cephalopoda
Subclass: †Ammonoidea
Order: †Ammonitida
Suborder: †Ancyloceratina
Family: †Baculitidae
Genus: †Baculites
Lamarck, 1799
Type species
†Baculites vertebralis
Lamarck, 1801[1] vide Meek, 1876[2]
Species

See text

Baculites ("walking stick rock") is an extinct genus of cephalopods with a nearly straight shell, included in the heteromorph ammonites. The genus, which lived worldwide throughout most of the Late Cretaceous, and which briefly survived the K-Pg mass extinction event, was named by Lamarck in 1799.[3][4]

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Ammonitida

Ammonitida

Ammonitida is an order of ammonoid cephalopods that lived from the Jurassic through Paleocene time periods, commonly with intricate ammonitic sutures.

Late Cretaceous

Late Cretaceous

The Late Cretaceous is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after creta, the Latin word for the white limestone known as chalk. The chalk of northern France and the white cliffs of south-eastern England date from the Cretaceous Period.

Paleocene ammonites

Paleocene ammonites

The term Paleocene ammonites describes families or genera of Ammonoidea that may have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred 66.043 million years ago. Although almost all evidence indicated that ammonites did not survive past the K–Pg boundary, there is some scattered evidence that some ammonites lived for a short period of time during the Paleocene epoch, although none survived the Danian ; they were likely extinct within 500,000 years of the K-Pg extinction event, which correlates to roughly 65.5 Ma. The evidence for Paleocene ammonoids is rare and remains controversial.

Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event

Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction, was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kilograms also became extinct, with the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians. It marked the end of the Cretaceous Period, and with it the Mesozoic era, while heralding the beginning of the Cenozoic era, which continues to this day.

Life

Shell anatomy

The adult shell of Baculites is generally straight and may be either smooth or with sinuous striae or ribbing that typically slant dorso-ventrally forward. The aperture likewise slopes to the front and has a sinuous margin. The venter is narrowly rounded to acute while the dorsum is more broad. The juvenile shell, found at the apex, is coiled in one or two whorls and described as minute, about 1 centimetre (0.39 in) in diameter. Adult Baculites ranged in size from about 7 centimetres (2.8 in) (Baculites larsoni) up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) in length.

As with other ammonites, the shell consisted of a series of camerae, or chambers, that were connected to the animal by a narrow tube called a siphuncle by which gas content and thereby buoyancy could be regulated in the same manner as Nautilus does today. The chambers are separated by walls called septa. The line where each septum meets the outer shell is called the suture or suture line. Like other true ammonites, Baculites have intricate suture patterns on their shells that can be used to identify different species.

One notable feature about Baculites is that the males may have been a third to a half the size of the females and may have had much lighter ribbing on the surface of the shell.

A fossil cast of the shell of a Baculites grandis on display at the North American Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, Utah.
A fossil cast of the shell of a Baculites grandis on display at the North American Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, Utah.

Orientation

The shell morphology of Baculites with slanted striations or ribbing, similarly slanted aperture, and more narrowly rounded to acute keel-like venter points to its having had a horizontal orientation in life as an adult. This same type of cross section is found in much earlier nautiloids such as Bassleroceras and Clitendoceras from the Ordovician period, which can be shown to have had a horizontal orientation. In spite of this, some researchers have concluded that Baculites lived in a vertical orientation, head hanging straight down, since lacking an apical counterweight, movement was largely restricted to that direction. More recent research, notably by Gerd Westermann, has reaffirmed that at least some Baculites species in fact lived in a more or less horizontal orientation.[5]

Ecology

From shell isotope studies, it is thought that Baculites inhabited the middle part of the water column, not too close to either the bottom or surface of the ocean. In some rock deposits Baculites are common, and they are thought to have lived in great shoals. However, they are not known to occur so densely as to be rock-forming, as do certain other extinct, straight-shelled cephalopods (e.g., orthocerid nautiloids). Studies on exceptionally preserved specimens have revealed a radula by synchrotron imagery.[6] The results suggest that Baculites fed on pelagic zooplankton (as suggested by remains of a larval gastropod and a pelagic isopod inside the mouth).[7]

Convergent evolution

Baculites and related Cretaceous straight ammonite cephalopods are often confused with the superficially similar orthocerid nautiloid cephalopods. Both are long and tubular in form, and both are common items for sale in rock shops (often under each other's names). Both lineages evidently evolved the tubular form independently, and at different times in earth history. The orthocerid nautiloids mostly lived much earlier (common during the Paleozoic Era, possibly going extinct in the Early Cretaceous)[8] than Baculites (Late Cretaceous/Danian only). The two types of fossils can be distinguished by many features, most obvious among which is the suture line: it is simple in orthocerid nautiloids and intricately folded in Baculites and related ammonoids.

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Ammonoidea

Ammonoidea

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 than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species. The earliest ammonites appeared during the Devonian, with the last species vanishing during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

Nautilus

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.

Ammonitida

Ammonitida

Ammonitida is an order of ammonoid cephalopods that lived from the Jurassic through Paleocene time periods, commonly with intricate ammonitic sutures.

Bassleroceras

Bassleroceras

Bassleroceras is an elongate upwardly curved, exogastric, genus with the venter on the under side more sharply rounded than the dorsum on the upper. The siphuncle is ventral, composed of thick-walled tubular segments in which connection rings thicken in towardly as in both the Ellesmerocerida and primitive Tarphycerida.

Clitendoceras

Clitendoceras

Clitendoceras is a genus of cephalopods in the order Endocerida from the Lower Ordovician with an elongate shell with a slight downward, endogastric, curvature and a siphuncle that lies along the ventral margin. Common for endocerids, the chambers are short and the septa close spaced with sutures sloping forward across the back of the shell. Septal necks are short in the young, lengthening in the adult. Endocones are simple, but with the ventral side of the last formed projecting forward. The endosiphotube running down the middle is arched on top and somewhat flat on the lower side.

Ordovician

Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period 485.4 million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period 443.8 Mya.

Orthoceras

Orthoceras

Orthoceras is a genus of extinct nautiloid cephalopod restricted to Middle Ordovician-aged marine limestones of the Baltic States and Sweden. This genus is sometimes called Orthoceratites. Note it is sometimes misspelled as Orthocera, Orthocerus or Orthoceros.

Radula

Radula

The radula is an anatomical structure used by mollusks for feeding, sometimes compared to a tongue. It is a minutely toothed, chitinous ribbon, which is typically used for scraping or cutting food before the food enters the esophagus. The radula is unique to the mollusks, and is found in every class of mollusk except the bivalves, which instead use cilia, waving filaments that bring minute organisms to the mouth.

Synchrotron

Synchrotron

A synchrotron is a particular type of cyclic particle accelerator, descended from the cyclotron, in which the accelerating particle beam travels around a fixed closed-loop path. The magnetic field which bends the particle beam into its closed path increases with time during the accelerating process, being synchronized to the increasing kinetic energy of the particles. The synchrotron is one of the first accelerator concepts to enable the construction of large-scale facilities, since bending, beam focusing and acceleration can be separated into different components. The most powerful modern particle accelerators use versions of the synchrotron design. The largest synchrotron-type accelerator, also the largest particle accelerator in the world, is the 27-kilometre-circumference (17 mi) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, built in 2008 by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It can accelerate beams of protons to an energy of 6.5 tera electronvolts (TeV or 1012 eV).

Zooplankton

Zooplankton

Zooplankton are the animal component of the planktonic community. Plankton are aquatic organisms that are unable to swim effectively against currents. Consequently, they drift or are carried along by currents in the ocean, or by currents in seas, lakes or rivers.

Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin creta, "chalk", which is abundant in the latter half of the period. It is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation Kreide.

Nautiloid

Nautiloid

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. They flourished during the early Paleozoic era, when they constituted the main predatory animals. Early in their evolution, nautiloids developed an extraordinary diversity of shell shapes, including coiled morphologies and giant straight-shelled forms (orthocones). Only a handful of rare coiled species, the nautiluses, survive to the present day.

Species distribution

Baculites specimen in the field; western South Dakota, Pierre Shale, Late Cretaceous. Part of the phragmocone (left) and part of the body chamber (right) are present.
Baculites specimen in the field; western South Dakota, Pierre Shale, Late Cretaceous. Part of the phragmocone (left) and part of the body chamber (right) are present.
Baculites showing sutures and remnant aragonite; western South Dakota, Late Cretaceous.
Baculites showing sutures and remnant aragonite; western South Dakota, Late Cretaceous.
Baculites from the Late Cretaceous of Wyoming. The original aragonite of the outer conch and inner septa has dissolved away, leaving this articulated internal mold.
Baculites from the Late Cretaceous of Wyoming. The original aragonite of the outer conch and inner septa has dissolved away, leaving this articulated internal mold.

Cenomanian:

Baculites gracilis is known from the Cenomanian Britton Formation.

Turonian:

Baculites undulatus, from the upper Turonian of Europe.[9]

Campanian:

The lower part of the Campanian stage (Upper Cretaceous) in the Western Interior of North America has yielded Baculites gilberti, early B. perplexus, B. asperiformis, B. maclearni, and B. obtusus, followed temporally by late Baculites perplexus and then by Baculites scotti. The upper part of the upper Campanian has yielded, from older to younger, B. compressus, B. coneatus, B. reesidei. B. jenseni, and B. ellasi, followed sequentially in the lower Maastrictian by Baculites baculus, B. grandis, and B. clinolobatis.[10][11]

Baculites pacificum is known from the Campanian of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Baculites leopoliensis from the Upper Campanian of Europe.[12]

Maastrichtian/Danian: The type species, Baculites vertebralis is from the upper Maastrichtian and Danian, and is one of the very last species of ammonites. Findings in Denmark and the Netherlands suggest the species survived the K-Pg mass extinction event, albeit being restricted to the Danian.[3][13][14] Baculites anceps is also known from Europe, although only from the Upper Maastrichtian.[12]

Holotype of Baculites ovatus Say, 1820 from the Navesink Formation in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.
Holotype of Baculites ovatus Say, 1820 from the Navesink Formation in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.

Baculites ovatus is known from the Maastrichtian Navesink Formation in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey.[15]

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Pierre Shale

Pierre Shale

The Pierre Shale is a geologic formation or series in the Upper Cretaceous which occurs east of the Rocky Mountains in the Great Plains, from Pembina Valley in Canada to New Mexico.

Aragonite

Aragonite

Aragonite is a carbonate mineral, one of the three most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate, CaCO3. It is formed by biological and physical processes, including precipitation from marine and freshwater environments.

Britton Formation

Britton Formation

The Britton Formation is a geologic formation deposited during the Middle Cenomanian to the Early Turonian ages of the Late Cretaceous in modern-day East Texas. It forms the lower half of the Eagle Ford Group in the northern portion of East Texas. The formation was named by W. L. Moreman in 1932 for outcrops on Mountain Creek near the small town of Britton, south of Dallas. In the Dallas area it has been subdivided into the Six Flags Limestone, Turner Park Member, and Camp Wisdom Member. The Six Flags Limestone is a 3 ft thick fossiliferous calcarenite made up of pieces (prisms) of Inoceramus clams. The Turner Park and Camp Wisdom Members were subdivided based on the numerous volcanic ash beds (bentonites) found in the Turner Park, and the common occurrence of concretions in the Camp Wisdom. They are approximately 120 ft and 250 ft thick in the Dallas area. Thin sandstones known as the Templeton Member are found in Grayson County, north of Dallas, that are age equivalent to the lower part of the Turner Park Member. The Templeton Member was originally described as a part of the Woodbine, but it was recently placed in the Britton Formation of the Eagle Ford Group based on its age as derived by ammonites. Plesiosaur remains are among the vertebrate fossils that have been recovered from its strata.

Paleocene ammonites

Paleocene ammonites

The term Paleocene ammonites describes families or genera of Ammonoidea that may have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which occurred 66.043 million years ago. Although almost all evidence indicated that ammonites did not survive past the K–Pg boundary, there is some scattered evidence that some ammonites lived for a short period of time during the Paleocene epoch, although none survived the Danian ; they were likely extinct within 500,000 years of the K-Pg extinction event, which correlates to roughly 65.5 Ma. The evidence for Paleocene ammonoids is rare and remains controversial.

Danian

Danian

The Danian is the oldest age or lowest stage of the Paleocene Epoch or Series, of the Paleogene Period or System, and of the Cenozoic Era or Erathem. The beginning of the Danian is at the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 Ma. The age ended 61.6 Ma, being followed by the Selandian.

Navesink Formation

Navesink Formation

The Navesink Formation is a 66 to 70 mya greensand glauconitic marl and sand geological formation in New Jersey. It is known for its Cretaceous period fossil shell beds and dinosaur bones.

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

Atlantic Highlands is a borough in Monmouth County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Bayshore Region. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 4,414, an increase of 29 (+0.7%) from the 2010 census count of 4,385, which in turn reflected a decline of 320 (−6.8%) from the 4,705 in the 2000 census.

Cultural significance

Baculites fossils are very brittle and almost always break. They are most commonly found broken in half or several pieces, usually along suture lines. Individual chambers found this way are sometimes referred to as "stone buffaloes" (due to their shapes), though the Native-American attribution typically given as part of the story behind the name is likely apocryphal. The Blackfoot have oral traditions that tell a story of the Iniskimm (Buffalo Calling Stone). They are still in use today by Indigenous peoples.

Baculites ovatus, the first species of Baculites described in the Americas, was described by Thomas Say in 1820[16] from a single specimen from the Navesink Formation in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. The specimen was later illustrated by Samuel George Morton, who published an etching in 1828.[17] After the death of the specimen's owner, the Quaker scientist Reuben Haines III, in 1831, the specimen was lost for 180 years until it was rediscovered at Haines's home, the historic Wyck House, in 2017 by Matthew Halley.[18]

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Thomas Say

Thomas Say

Thomas Say was an American entomologist, conchologist, and herpetologist. His studies of insects and shells, numerous contributions to scientific journals, and scientific expeditions to Florida, Georgia, the Rocky Mountains, Mexico, and elsewhere made him an internationally known naturalist. Say has been called the father of American descriptive entomology and American conchology. He served as librarian for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, curator at the American Philosophical Society, and professor of natural history at the University of Pennsylvania.

Navesink Formation

Navesink Formation

The Navesink Formation is a 66 to 70 mya greensand glauconitic marl and sand geological formation in New Jersey. It is known for its Cretaceous period fossil shell beds and dinosaur bones.

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey

Atlantic Highlands is a borough in Monmouth County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Bayshore Region. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 4,414, an increase of 29 (+0.7%) from the 2010 census count of 4,385, which in turn reflected a decline of 320 (−6.8%) from the 4,705 in the 2000 census.

Samuel George Morton

Samuel George Morton

Samuel George Morton was an American physician, natural scientist, and writer who argued against the single creation story of the Bible, monogenism, instead supporting a theory of multiple racial creations, polygenism.

Reuben Haines III

Reuben Haines III

Reuben Haines III was a Quaker farmer, brewer, abolitionist, scientist, ornithologist, meteorologist, firefighter, philanthropist, and educational reformer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Wyck House

Wyck House

The Wyck house, also known as the Haines house or Hans Millan house, is a historic mansion, museum, garden, and urban farm in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was recognized as a National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its well-preserved condition and its documentary records, which span nine generations of a single family.

Source: "Baculites", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, November 3rd), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculites.

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Further Reading

Ammonoidea

Nautiloid

Orthoceras

Baculitidae

Pierre Shale

Pachydiscus

Hoploscaphites

Sphenodiscus

Acanthoceratoidea

Eutrephoceras

Phyllopachyceras

Paleocene ammonites

Eubaculites

Rødvig Formation
References
  1. ^ Lamarck, J. P. B. A. de M. de (1801): Systeme des Animaux sans vertebres. The author; Deterville, Paris, vii + 432 pp.
  2. ^ Meek, F. B. (1876): A report on the invertebrate Cretaceous and Tertiary fossils of the upper Missouri country. In Hayden,F. V. Report of the United States Geological Survey of the Territories, 9, lxiv + 629 pp., 45 pis
  3. ^ a b Landman, Neil H.; Goolaerts, Stijn; Jagt, John W.M.; Jagt-Yazykova, Elena A.; Machalski, Marcin (2015), Klug, Christian; Korn, Dieter; De Baets, Kenneth; Kruta, Isabelle (eds.), "Ammonites on the Brink of Extinction: Diversity, Abundance, and Ecology of the Order Ammonoidea at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) Boundary", Ammonoid Paleobiology: From macroevolution to paleogeography, Topics in Geobiology, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 497–553, doi:10.1007/978-94-017-9633-0_19, ISBN 978-94-017-9633-0, retrieved 2021-10-28
  4. ^ Lamarck, J. P. B. A. de M. de (1799): Prodrome d'une nouvelle classification des coquilles. Mem. Soc. Hist. Nat.Paris, (1799), 63-90.
  5. ^ Westermann, G. E. G. (1996). Ammonoid life and habitat. In N. H. Landman, K. Tanabe, and R. A. Davis (editors), Ammonoid Paleobiology, pp. 607–707. New York: Plenum Press.
  6. ^ Kruta, I.; Landman, N.; Rouget, I.; Cecca, F.; Tafforeau, P. (2011). "The Role of Ammonites in the Mesozoic Marine Food Web Revealed by Jaw Preservation". Science. 331 (6013): 70–72. Bibcode:2011Sci...331...70K. doi:10.1126/science.1198793. PMID 21212354. S2CID 206530342.
  7. ^ Neil H. Landman, Neal L. Larson and William A. Cobban (2007). Chapter 13. Jaws and Radula of Baculites from the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian) of North America. In N. H. Landman et al. (eds.), Cephalopods Present and Past: New Insights and Fresh Perspectives Archived 2013-02-02 at the Wayback Machine, 257–298. © 2007 Springer.
  8. ^ Doguzhaeva, Larisa (1994-01-01). "An Early Cretaceous orthocerid cephalopod from North-Western Caucasus". Palaeontology. 37: 889–899.
  9. ^ "Fossiles par ordre taxonomique, ammonites". crioceratites.free.fr. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  10. ^ Cretaceous Fossil Zones
  11. ^ Baculitidae jdsamonites
  12. ^ a b "Baculitidae Baculitidae". www.ammonites.fr. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  13. ^ "Bulletin Volume 52 – 2005". Dansk Geologisk Forening (in Danish). 2005-05-25. doi:10.37570/bgsd-2005-52-08. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  14. ^ W. M. Jagt, John (2012-01-01). "Ammonieten uit het Laat-Krijt en Vroeg-Paleogeen van Limburg". Grondboor & Hamer. 66 (1): 154–183.
  15. ^ "Mesozoic_Cephalopods". earthphysicsteaching.homestead.com. Retrieved 2021-10-28.
  16. ^ Say, Thomas (1820). "Observations on some species of Zoophytes, Shells, &c. principally fossil (part 2)". The American Journal of Science and Arts. 2: 34–45.
  17. ^ Morton, Samuel George (1828). "Description of the fossil shells which characterize the Atlantic Secondary Formation of New Jersey and Delaware; including four new species". Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 6: 72–90.
  18. ^ Halley, Matthew R. (2019). "Rediscovery of the holotype of the extinct cephalopod Baculites ovatus Say, 1820 after nearly two centuries". Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 167 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1635/053.167.0101. ISSN 0097-3157. S2CID 164642352.
  • Arkell et al., 1957, Mesozoic Ammonoidea, Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology Part L. Geological Soc. of America, Univ of Kansas Press. R.C. Moore, (Ed)
  • W. A. Cobban and Hook, S. C. 1983 Mid-Cretaceous (Turonian) ammonite fauna from Fence Lake area of west-central New Mexico. Memoir 41, New Mexico Bureau of Mines&Mineral Resources, Socorro NM.
  • W. A. Cobban and Hook, S. C. 1979, Collignoniceras woollgari wooollgari (Mantell) ammonite fauna from Upper Cretaceous of Western Interior, United States. Memoir 37, New Mexico Bureau of Mines&Mineral Resources, Socorro NM.
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