Argonautidae

Argonautidae Temporal range: Oligocene – Recent
Eggcase of Argonauta nodosa, showing the derived double keel of the genus
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Cephalopoda
Order:	Octopoda
Superfamily:	Argonautoida
Family:	Argonautidae Tryon, 1879
Genera
Argonauta †Izumonauta †Kapal †Mizuhobaris †Obinautilus

Argonautidae is a family of cephalopods encompassing the modern paper nautiluses of the genus Argonauta along with several extinct genera of shelled octopods.

All eggcases possessing nodes, ribs, and a double keel, with the exception of those of Kapal batavus, have been assigned to Argonauta. Eggcases lacking these morphological features have been placed in the other Argonautidae genera.

Fossil Argonautidae eggcases have been described from Japan, New Zealand, Sumatra, Europe, and California.

Further reading

• (German) Bandel, K. & W.-C. Dullo (1984). Zur Schalenstruktur fossiler und rezenter Argonauta-Gehäuse (Octopoda, Cephalopoda). Natur und Mensch: Jahresmitteilungen der Naturhistorischen Gesellschaft Nürnberg 1984: 33–38.
• Kaseno, Y. (1955). Neogene Argonautinae from Kahoku-gun, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. Kanazawa University, Science Reports 3: 339–344.
• Kobayashi, T. (1954). Izumonauta, a new genus of the Argonautinae, with a note on their rare but gregarious fossil occurrence. Japanese Journal of Geology and Geography 25(1–2): 21–34.
• Kobayashi, T. (1956). A palaeo-meteorological interpretation to the occurrence of the Argonautinae in Province Kaga, central Japan. Japanese Journal of Geology and Geography 27(2–4): 93–104.
• Lewy, Z. (1996). Octopods: nude ammonoids that survived the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary mass extinction. Geology 24(7): 627–630. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(1996)024<0627:ONATST>2.3.CO;2
• Tomida, S., M. Shiba & T. Nobuhara (2006). First post-Miocene Argonauta from Japan, and its palaeontological significance. Cainozoic Research 4(1–2): 19–25.
• (Japanese) Yanagisawa, Y. (1990). Age of fossil Argonautidae (Cephalopoda) from Hokuriku Province (central Honshu, Japan) based on diatom biostratigraphy. PDF Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Japan 41(3): 115–127.
• Argonautidae at the Tree of Life Web Project