Monday, November 8, 2021

Wiping the smile off the face of the horizontal Nautiloid


The cover of New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources Memoir 32 (1977), and the description from inside the front cover (below) (both used with permission from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources).  Showing the contented and smiling face of an orthoconic cephalopod with cameral (or siphonal) deposits counterweighting the gas-filled phragmocone letting it float horizontally and getting its face "out of the mud".  The non-counterweighted forms with disgusted frowns floating vertically (or about to).  I've had a smile on my face ever since first seeing this paper over 30 years ago just thinking of how happy the nautiloids on the cover were. 


Needless to say, I now have to re-arrange the thoughts of horizontal nautiloids having smiles and put the smile on the vertical nautiloid.

This might be just as hard as giving up the Geosynclinal Theory I was taught back in 1972.

:)

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