Canon PowerShot S100
ƒ/2
5.2 mm
1/30
125

400 Million years old, found in Morocco.

These lowly relatives of the squid and octopi lasted over 300 million years. This particular example dates to the Emsian Age, when Ammonites were all the rage as sea-life goes. The coiled yet non-contiguous habit is quite uncommon among Ammonites, possibly due to a relative lack of robustness leading to an early inclusion in someone else’s diet.

9 responses to “Atavistic Algorithms”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    and meanwhile, these cute critters from the same Devonian epoch are still with us. Their eggs have a 20 year shelf life…
    A Noodly Encounter

    Reply
  2. sbove Avatar
    sbove

    Clearly you don’t know an ammonite from the rare emsian big horn ram. 😉

    Reply
  3. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    amazing similarity there, eh… fractal forms with scale invariance…

    Reply
  4. mebooyou Avatar
    mebooyou

    ha! I actually though it was a big horn ram horn at first glance. I have never seen them with a "non-contiguous habit" before.

    Reply
  5. RRNeal Avatar
    RRNeal

    I’ve not seen whorls like that before. Enjoyed the description of failed allele selection leading to a lunch.

    Reply
  6. Temari 09 Avatar
    Temari 09

    You’re so kind to share your beautiful images with a CC license. Thank you!

    Thanks for sharing with our group.

    cc comment 2013

    Reply
  7. Temari 09 Avatar
    Temari 09

    Thank you for sharing your cool image. Hope you like how I used it here:
    Ammonite Girl

    Reply
  8. Temari 09 Avatar
    Temari 09

    Thank you for your visit to my stream and your kind comment, Steve, much appreciated. :))

    Reply
  9. subarcticmike Avatar
    subarcticmike

    marvelous take of a spectacular fossil

    Reply

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