Douvilliceras Ammonite, from Madagascar (REF:DA4)

This shell is involute and compressed in profile. Strong, simple ribs pass over the rounded venter, and are each divided into numerous, even-sized tubercles, which would originally have carried long spines.

This genus was certainly a poor swimmer - the broad profile of the whorl, the shape of the shell offered considerable resistance to the water. Douvilleiceras may well have spent much time scavenging or hunting on the sea bed.

Ammonites are a form of ammonoid distinguished by their complex suture lines. They were abundant and diverse in the seas of the Mesozoic Era, and they evolved very rapidly to produce a number of species and genera. After a decline in diversity during the late Cretaceous period, ammonites become extinct at the same time as other marine groups, such as Belemnites, and terrestrial groups, such as dinosaurs.

Ammonites were free swimming creatures distantly related to squid and octopuses. Like these modern relatives they would have been predators, catching prey with their long tentacles. Their shell was divided up into chambers filled with liquid and gas, which kept them buoyant in the water, much in the same way as a submarine. They can be preserved in a number of different ways.

Ammonites first appeared around 400 million years ago and became a very successful group of animals, dying out around the same time as the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.