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However, most of other researchers do not agree that Nectocaris actually being a cephalopod or even mollusk. [140] [141] Early cephalopods were likely predators near the top of the food chain. [25] After the late Cambrian extinction led to the disappearance of many radiodonts, predatory niches became available for other animals. [142]
Other mollusks include gastropods, scaphopods and bivalves. Traditionally, the most common classification of the cephalopods has been a four-fold division (by Bather, 1888), into the orthoceratoids, nautiloids, ammonoids, and coleoids. This article is about nautiloids in that broad sense, sometimes called Nautiloidea sensu lato.
Only cephalopods with chambered shells have siphuncles, such as the extinct ammonites and belemnites, and the living nautiluses, cuttlefish, and Spirula. In the case of the cuttlefish, the siphuncle is indistinct and connects all the small chambers of that animal's highly modified shell; in the other cephalopods it is thread-like and passes ...
Nautiluses are much closer to the first cephalopods that appeared about 500 million years ago than the early modern cephalopods that appeared maybe 100 million years later (ammonoids and coleoids). They have a seemingly simple brain, not the large complex brains of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, and had long been assumed to lack intelligence ...
The nervous system of cephalopods is the most complex of all invertebrates. [54] [55] The giant nerve fibers of the cephalopod mantle have been widely used for many years as experimental material in neurophysiology; their large diameter (due to lack of myelination) makes them relatively easy to study compared with other animals. [56] Eye of ...
A siphon is an anatomical structure which is part of the body of aquatic molluscs in three classes: Gastropoda, Bivalvia and Cephalopoda (members of these classes include saltwater and freshwater snails, clams, octopus, squid and relatives). Siphons in molluscs are tube-like structures in which water (or, more rarely, air) flows.
Mollusca is a phylum of protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks [a] (/ ˈ m ɒ l ə s k s /). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum after Arthropoda . [ 5 ]
The Nautilida constitute a large and diverse order of generally coiled nautiloid cephalopods that began in the mid Paleozoic and continues to the present with a single family, the Nautilidae which includes two genera, Nautilus and Allonautilus, with six species.