Belemnitella americana (Morton, 1830) - Cretaceous cephalopod related to the squid - pair

belemnite - Belemnitella americana (Morton,1830)

Belemnites were cephalopods, but unlike the squid, they had an internal skeleton. Belemnites had ten tentacles lined with hooks at one end of a streamlined tubular body, somewhat like the squid. At the tail, a cone-shaped feature called a rostrum, comprised the skeleton. The soft parts are very rarely fossilized, with only the cone being preserved, as with these fossils. 

Belemnites lived in the sea while dinosaurs roamed the land, ranging from late Triassic to late Cretaceous. They went extinct in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that finished off the dinosaurs, possibly because the embryonic shell structure could not survive the acidification of the oceans. During the earliest Jurassic, belemnites were restricted to the European area, though soon became worldwide in distribution.

These specimens were collected from the Cretaceous Navesink Formation, at Nutt Farm, New Egypt, Ocean County, New Jersey. 

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