Giant nautiloids rule the seas
Straight-shelled cephalopods up to nine metres long become the largest predators yet to exist.
- When
- Known to
- ± 10 million years
- Era
- Ordovician, Paleozoic
Endocerid nautiloids such as Cameroceras carry cone-shaped shells that in the largest species may have reached several metres, making them by a wide margin the biggest animals of their time. Jet-propelled and equipped with tentacles, they hunted trilobites, eurypterids and each other. They dominate for tens of millions of years, then are hit so hard by the end-Ordovician extinction that they never recover.