Shuranoceras
Encyclopedia
Shuranoceras is a genus in the extinct oncocerid
Oncocerida
The Oncocerida comprise a diverse group of generally small nautiloid cephalopods known from the Middle Ordovician to the Mississippian ,in which the connecting rings are thin and siphuncle segments are variably expanded...

 family Karoceratidae that plied the shallow sea floor from the Early Silurian
Silurian
The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...

 to the Early Devonian
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...

. Shuranoceras is characterized by a smooth, compressed, slowely enlarging orthoconic shellwith a ventral submarginal siphuncle
Siphuncle
The siphuncle is a strand of tissue passing longitudinally through the shell of a cephalopod mollusk. Only cephalopods with chambered shells have siphuncles, such as the extinct ammonites and belemnites, and the living nautiluses, cuttlefish, and Spirula...

 composed of complrex segments. Shuranoceras was found in middle Silurian strata in Ferghana, central Asia.

Oncocerids (Order Oncocerida) were Nautiloid cephalopods that lived during the early part of the Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...

 Era. They are closely related to the Nautilids
Nautilida
The Nautilida constitute a large and diverse order of generally coiled nautiloid cephalopods that began in the mid Paleozoic and continues to the present with a single family, the Nautilidae which includes two genera, Nautilus and Allonautilus, with six species...

 that include the living Nautilus
Nautilus
Nautilus is the common name of marine creatures of cephalopod family Nautilidae, the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and of its smaller but near equal suborder, Nautilina. It comprises six living species in two genera, the type of which is the genus Nautilus...

, but on a different evolutionary branch
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