Bathmoceras

Taxobox
fossil_range = Middle and Late Ordovician
name = "Bathmoceras"


regnum = Animalia
phylum = Mollusca
classis = Cephalopoda
subclassis = Nautiloidea
ordo = Ellesmerocerida
familia = Bathmoceratidae
genus = " Bathmoceras "
genus_authority = Barrande, 1867

"Bathmoceras" is a genus of the Ellesmeroceridaand placed in the family Bathmoceratidae, in which Furnish nnd Glenister,1964 also includes "Eothinceras". Flower, 1964, separates the two genera into their respective families which he included in his suborder, Cyrtocerinina

The shells of "Bathmoceras" are rather large, straight or faintly exogastric. Sutures are simple except for a sharp mid ventral saddle. The siphuncle is large and near the venter, in which the segments have a slightly sinuous outline. Septal necks are rather long. Most diagnostically, the connecting rings are thickened into forward projecting lobes that may extend internally two or three segments within the siphuncle.

Bathmoceras is of Middle and Late Ordovician age and has been found in northern and central Europe and in the Macdonnell Ranges in central Australia.

At one time (Flower 1957) Bathmoceras was thought to have possibly given rise to Polydesmia, once thought to have been the ancestral actinocerid. Since then revision of actinocerid phylogeny and of Ordovician stratigraphy in east Asia have cast doubts on this hypothesis. (Flower 1976)

References

*Flower, R.H. 1957, Studies of the Actinoceratida.; Memoir 2; New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, NM
*Flower, R.H. 1964, The Nautiloid Order Ellesmeroceratida (Cephalopoda)Memoir 12; New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, NM
*Flower, R.H. 1976, New American Wutinoceratidae with Review of Actinoceroid Occurrences in Eastern Hemisphere; Part I - Memoir 28; New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Socorro, NM
*Furnish W.M and Glenister, Brian F 1964, Ellesmerocerida in the Treatise on Invertebrate Plaleontology pp K129-K157, Bathmoceratidae, K156.