Ammonites

“ This is a monograph on a new ammonite, named by the author Ammonites Parkeri, obtained from the carboniferous strata of Wise County, Texas, which is noteworthy as being the first ammonite that has been detected in any American formation below the Mesozoic series. Carboniferous ammonites have also, however, been found in India. ”

“ In the shale we find numerous minute Ammonites, sorely weathered; in the sandstone, Belemnites, some of them of great size; and dark carbonaceous markings, passing not unfrequently into a glossy cubical coal. At the foot of the cliff I picked up an ammonite of considerable size and well-marked character,—the Ammonites Murchisonæ, first discovered on this coast by Sir R. Murchison about fifteen years ago. It measures, when full grown, from six to seven inches in diameter; the inner whorls, which are broadly visible, are ribbed ”

“ We have noticed that in the Devonian the sutures of some of the chambered shells become angled, evolving the Goniatite type. The sutures now become lobed and corrugated in Ceratites. The process was carried still farther, and the sutures were elaborately frilled in the great order of the Ammonites. It was in the Jurassic that the Ammonites reached their height. No fossils are more abundant or characteristic of their age. Great banks of their shells formed beds of limestone in warm seas the world over.
The ammonite stem branched into a most luxuriant variety of forms. ”

“ The internal structure of these Ammonites is generally well preserved, the chambers being lined with spar or other mineral matter; transverse polished sections are often very beautiful from the several cells being occupied by variously coloured marble, susceptible of a high polish. (Pl. III.) In some examples the entire shell is transmuted into brilliant pyrites (sulphuret of iron) , and the chambers are filled with white spar; a specimen of this kind in my possession, collected by Lady Murchison, is the most elegant fossil imaginable.
Plate III.
Polished section of an Ammonite. ”

“ Here again we find the inventions of art anticipated in the works of nature, and the same principle applied to resist the inward pressure of the sea upon the shells of Ammonites, that an engineer makes use of in fixing transverse stays beneath the planks of the wooden centre on which he builds his arch of stone.
The disposition of these supports assumes throughout the family of Ammonites a different arrangement from the more simple curvature of the edges of the transverse plates within the shells of Nautili ”

“ When we recollect that throughout both these great formations, the still more numerous extinct family of Ammonites is co-extensive with the Belemnites; and that each species of Ammonite exhibits also contrivances, more complex and perfect than those retained in the few existing cognate genera of Cephalopods; we cannot but infer that these extinct families filled a larger space, and performed more important functions among the inhabitants of the ancient seas, than are assigned to their few living representatives in our modern oceans. ”

“ Wherever access to it can be had, we find it richly fossiliferous; but its organisms, with the exception of its Belemnites, are very imperfectly preserved. I dug up from under the trap-blocks some of the common Liasic Ammonites of the north-eastern coast of Scotland, a few of the septa of a large Nautilus, broken pieces of wood, and half-effaced casts of what seems a branched coral; but only minute portions of the shells have been converted into stone; here and there a few chambers in the whorls of an Ammonite or Nautilus, though the outline of the entire organism lies impressed in the shale ”

“ On examining the proofs of Contrivance and Design that pervade the testaceous remains of the family of Ammonites, we find, in every species, abundant evidence of minute and peculiar mechanisms, adapting the shell to the double purpose of acting as a float, and of forming a protection to the body of its inhabitant. ”

“ Back view of Ammonites sphæricus, from the limestone of Derbyshire, showing the position of the siphuncle upon the dorsal margin, with its collar advancing outwards between the two simple dorsal lobes; the lateral lobes are also simple and without foliations, and pointed inwards. ”

“ Within these limits, each formation is characterised by particular species, the number of individuals being often very great, and the size which is sometimes attained being nothing short of gigantic. In the Lias, particular species of Ammonites may succeed one another regularly, each having a more or less definite horizon, which it does not transgress. It is thus possible to distinguish a certain number of zones, each characterised by a particular Ammonite, together with other associated fossils. ”

“ In certain argillaceous deposits, as the Galt, and the clays of the Lias, Ammonites with the shell preserved are abundant; generally the outer opaque layer is wanting, or adheres to the matrix when a specimen is removed, leaving only the internal nacreous, or pearly coat. ”

“ In more than two hundred known species of Ammonites, the transverse plates present some beautifully varied modifications of this foliated expansion at their edges; the effect of which, in every case, is to increase the strength of the outer shell, by multiplying the subjacent points of resistance to external pressure. We know that the pressure of the sea, at no great depth, will force a cork into a bottle filled with air, or crush a hollow cylinder or sphere of thin copper ”

“ Like the fossil Nautili, the Ammonites most commonly occur as casts, the shell having been dissolved. Sometimes these consist of semi-transparent calcareous spar, the cast of each cell being distinct, but held together by the interlocking « 479 » of the foliations of the septa; such examples are of great beauty and interest (see Bd. pl. xlii. figs. 2, 3) ; they most frequently occur in the limestones of the Oolite. The siphuncle is often preserved, even in the chalk specimens, in which all traces of the shell are lost. ”

“ The angle α, as we have seen, is not always, nor rigorously, a constant angle. In some Ammonites it may increase with age, the whorls becoming closer and closer; in others it may decrease rapidly, and even fall to zero, the coiled shell then straightening out, as in Lituites and similar forms. ”

“ The quarries, which are in the immediate vicinity of the town, abound in Ammonites, Trigoniæ, and other shells: and some layers are entirely composed of the casts of several species. The Ammonites are principally of two kinds, viz. A. biplex and A. triplicatus, and vary in size from a few inches to upwards of three feet in diameter; the specimens are casts only, no vestiges of the shells remaining. At Aylesbury the same species occur in clay, with the shells entire (see p. 481) . A large collection may be made in a few hours ”

“ We saw here no remains of ammonites. Numerous other species appear to be similar to those found in the limestone of the Catskill and Hellebergh mountains.
The soil, which overlays the limestone of Cincinnati, is a deep argillaceous loam, intermixed with much animal [pg067] and vegetable matter. Vegetation is here luxuriant; and many plants unknown eastward of the Alleghany mountains, were constantly presenting themselves to our notice. Two species of æsculus are common. ”

“ In each of these genera it is the exterior form of the shell that is principally varied, whilst the interior is similarly constructed in all of them, to act as a float, subservient to the movements of Cephalopodous Mollusks. We have seen that the Ammonites, beginning with the Transition strata, appear in all formations, until the termination of the Chalk, whilst the Hamites and Scaphites are very rare, and the Turrilites and Baculites do not appear at all, until the commencement of the Cretaceous formations. ”

“ I have many specimens from the lias of Whitby, of the Ammonites Communis, in which the outer chamber thus filled with spar, occupies nearly the entire last whorl of the shell, its largest extremity only being filled with lias. From specimens of this kind we also learn, that the animal inhabiting the shell of an Ammonite, had no ink-bag; if such an organ existed, traces of its colour must have been found within the cavity which contained the body of the animal at the moment of its death. The protection of a shell seems to have rendered the presence of an ink-bag superfluous. ”

“ Ammonites, and such small geological fry, were to be found by the thousand in the petrified mud beds of the Cobb region; but it was left to the ingenuity, aided by good fortune, of the foreigner to unearth from the flaking and perishing cliffs of lias some of the earliest and finest specimens of the ichthyo- and plesio-saurus that a past world has yielded to the naturalists. ”

“ Certain genera of ammonites, Haploceras, Lytoceras, Phylloceras, rare in the north, are common in the south; and the southern facies is further characterized by the peculiar group of swollen belemnites (Dumontia) , by the gasteropods Actionella, Nerinea, &c., and by reef-building corals. The southern facies is far more widespread and typical of the period than is the chalk; it not only covers all southern Europe, but spreads eastwards far into Asia and round the Mediterranean basin into Africa. ”

“ In this there are no corals, but great abundance of cephalopoda of the genera Ammonite and Belemnite. (See fig. 277.) In some of the clay of very fine texture ammonites are very perfect, although somewhat compressed, and are seen to be furnished on each side of the aperture with a single horn-like projection (see fig. 278.) . These were discovered in the cuttings of the Great Western Railway, near Chippenham, in 1841, and have been described by Mr. Pratt. [262-A]
Fig. ”

“ We turn to the seas, and find an equal carnage among some of its most advanced inhabitants. The great cuttlefish-like Belemnites and the whole race of the Ammonites, large and small, are banished from the earth. The fall of the Ammonites is particularly interesting, and has inspired much more or less fantastic speculation. ”

“ So literally true is it, although Seetzen, and Burckhardt, and Buckingham, who relate the facts, make no reference or allusion whatever to any of the prophecies, and travelled for a different object than the elucidation of the Scriptures,--that “the chief city of the Ammonites is a stable for camels, and a couching place for flocks.”
“The Ammonites shall not be remembered among the nations.” While the Jews, who were long their hereditary enemies, continue as distinct a people as ever, though dispersed among all nations, no trace of the Ammonites remains ”

“ By removing them in succession in the adult form we find an illustration of the evolution of the elaborate shell of the Jurassic Ammonite. It is an admirable testimony to the validity of the embryonic law we have often quoted—that the young animal is apt to reproduce the past stages of its ancestry—that the order of the building of the shell in the late Ammonite corresponds to the order we trace in its development in the geological chronicle. About a thousand species of Ammonites were developed in the Mesozoic, and none survived the Mesozoic. ”

“ III. The Edomites and Egyptians had not so deep a mark of displeasure put upon them as the Moabites and Ammonites had. If an Edomite or Egyptian turned proselyte, his grand-children should be looked upon as members of the congregation of the Lord to all intents and purposes, v. 7, 8. We should think that the Edomites had been more injurious to the Israelites than the Ammonites, and deserved as little favour from them (Num. xx. 20) , and yet " Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, as thou must an Ammonite, for he is thy brother." ”

“ The Ammonites are not merely interesting as extinct monsters of the earth's Middle Ages, and stimulating terrors of the deep to the animals on which they fed. They have an especial interest for the evolutionist. ”

“ Ammonites giganteus, found in the Portland stone at Tisbury in Wiltshire. This beautiful fossil is in the collection of Miss Benett. The chambers are all void, and the transverse Plates and Shell converted to Calcedony. ”

“ The fact that ammonites were never found with snakes' heads was, of course, always more or less of a stumbling-block, though the workmen and others frequently got over the difficulty by making and fixing heads to the ammonites on their own account. ”

“ Few or no extinct types are to be found in these older strata—there is nothing among the plants equivalent to the unmistakably extinct Ammonites, Belemnites, and a hundred other groups, and we only meet with constant variations in the same genus or family, these variations having seldom any obvious relation to phylogeny. ”

“ At Glos, near Liseaux, in the Coral Rag, not only the Ammonites, but the Trigoniæ and Aviculæ have preserved all their brilliant nacre. Sometimes these remains are much changed, the organic matter having entirely disappeared; it sometimes happens also, though rarely, that they become petrified, that is to say, the external form is preserved, but the original organic elements have wholly disappeared, and have been replaced by foreign mineral substances—generally by silica or by carbonate of lime. ”

“ The statement, in Jos 13:25, that the half of the country of the Ammonites was given to the tribe of Gad, is not at variance with this; for the allusion there is to that portion of the land of the Ammonites which was between the Arnon and the Jabbok, and which had already been taken from the Ammonites by the Amorites under Sihon (cf. Jdg 11:13.) . Nevertheless the rejection of Israel and its dispersion among the heathen were not to be the close. ”