Baculites
Searched as Baculites vanhoepeni. The Paleobiology Database treats Baculites as the accepted name.
Baculites is an extinct genus of heteromorph ammonite cephalopods with almost straight shells. The genus, which lived worldwide throughout most of the Late Cretaceous, and which briefly survived the K-Pg mass extinction event, was named by Lamarck in 1799.

DanielCD · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- BaculitidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Life habit
- nektonicPBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Motility
- fast-movingPBDB, for Ammonoidea
- Vision
- well-developedPBDB, for Cephalopoda
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Cephalopoda
Time the record covers
At most 12 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 72.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Baculites on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
1 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Baculites has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Baculites and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Baculites and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
790 taxa- Bryozoa93 sites
- Nuculana66 sites
- Exogyra (Exogyra) costata57 sites
- Anomia argentaria55 sites
- Turritella54 sites
- Veniella conradi54 sites
- Syncyclonema48 sites
- Cymbophora47 sites
- Idonearca capax46 sites
- Crassatella vadosa43 sites
- Cubitostrea tecticosta43 sites
- Inoceramus43 sites
- Serpula43 sites
- Turritella vertebroides43 sites
- Cliona42 sites
- Corbula41 sites
- Bellifusus40 sites
- Liopistha protexta39 sites
- Cardium38 sites
- Turritella trilira38 sites
- Vertebrata38 sites
- Crenella serica37 sites
- Cyprimeria36 sites
- Gryphaeostrea vomer36 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 957 sites for Baculites, and this reads 240 of them. Of that, one read hit the database's own return limit, so every count below is a floor rather than a total. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content3
Picture of Baculites
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- DanielCD
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it

CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Baculites sp. · RUB:PAL:11275
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC0 Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Baculites”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itBaculitidae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Lamarck 1799