Ancient ammonoids' shell designs may have aided buoyancy control

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 at the fossil shells of ...

Ups and downs of biodiversity after mass extinction

The climate after the largest mass extinction so far 252 million years ago was cool, later very warm and then cool again. Thanks to the cooler temperatures, the diversity of marine fauna ballooned, as paleontologists from ...

Nautilus survives 500 million years -- until humans fancy it

No matter how well adapted an animal may be, it can spell evolutionary doom to have feathers or even shells that become coveted by human beings. Take the nautilus, a creature that pulled easily through the asteroid impact ...