Barbara Seuss

Abstract The digital revolution has transformed palaeontology through the development of openly accessible, community-driven databases that underpin some of the most complex and large-scale empirical studies of the history of life on Earth. These systems safeguard high-effort, volunteered data and have revealed major macroevolutionary patterns, including the ‘Big 5’ mass extinctions.

Through geological time, morphological adaptations to a nektic life in the water column are some of the key drivers of cephalopod evolution (e.g. Teichert 1967; Crick 1988; Wade 1988; Kröger et al. 2011). This results, among other things, in a conflict between requirements arising from the maintenance of neutral buoyancy and constraints to allow for manoeuvrability and stability (e.g. Crick 1988; Chamberlain 1993; Peterman et al. 2019; Peterman & Ritterbush 2022).

Abstract Orthoceratoid cephalopods are common in the Palaeozoic rock record but became extinct in the Late Triassic. Many orthoceratoids contain cameral deposits, which are enigmatic calcareous structures within their chambered shell that presumably balanced their straight conchs in a horizontal position. Since the mid-19th century, palaeontologists have attempted to understand the cameral deposit formation process.