Aipoceratoidea

Aipoceratoidea Temporal range:
Aipoceras
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Mollusca
Class:	Cephalopoda
Subclass:	Nautiloidea
Order:	Nautilida
Superfamily:	Aipocerataceae Hyatt (1883)
Families
Aipoceratidae Solenochilidae Scyphoceratidae

The Aipocerataceae are a superfamily within the order Nautilida characterized by rapidly expanding, smooth to ribbed, cyrtoconic to coiled shells with rounded or sometimes dorsally flattened or impressed whorls, nearly straight sutures, and a ventral and marginal siphuncle. Septal necks are orthochoantic ventrally and orthochoantic or cyrtochoanitic dorsally.

The Aipocerataceae are the Solenochilida Flower and are the Solenocheilaceae which Shimansky included in his Rutoceratina minus the Litogyroceratidae which the Treatise includes in the Rutoceratidae (Tainocerataceae)

The Aipocerataceae include three families and at least nine genera. The families are the AipoceratidaeHyatt 1883, Solenochilidae Hyatt 1893, and Scyphoceratidae Ruzhentsev & Shimansky 1954.

The Aipoceratidae are represented by the loosely coiled, compressed and gyroconic Aipoceras from the Lower Carboniferous (Miss) of Europe and North America; the Solenochilidae by the tightly coiled comopolitan Solenochilis from the Upper Carboniferous (Penn)- Lower Permian, with spines projecting straight out laterally from the umbilical region; Scyphoceratidae by Scyphoceras from the Lower Permian of the Urals which has a ribbed shell and a relatively small and sharply curved phragmocone.

The derivation of the Aipocerataceae is somewhat tenuous. Kummel (1964, K385 fig. 280) shows a tentative connection to the Rutoceratidae in the Devonian. Flower also shows a tentative connection but from the equivalent Solenochilida to the Barrndeocerida. Shimansky, though, shows a direct connection from the Solenocheilaceae to the Rutoceratidae.