Ammonites / Аммониты

Most of what is written about ammonites is found in scientific journals, and an account of the natural history of ammonites for the general reader has long been overdue. The last such book, that went some way to bringing ammonites to the general reader was The ammonites: Their life and their world, was written by Ulrich Lehman and translated into English in 1981. Lehman drew from the latest scientific papers of the time, many of which he wrote himself, creating an impressive array of facts and theories which produced a detailed but very readable book. However, since its publication, palaeontologists have not just accumulated more information about ammonites but have also made some fundamental changes in the way ammonites are envisaged. The most significant has been the switch away from the nautilus as the prototype of the ammonite animal towards the more active cephalopods like the octopus. Any new book on ammonites must take into account these new observations and ideas, and in this book we describe some of the most important ones. <...>