Ammoniten (Ammonites)

This philatelic exhibit provided by Mr. Rudolf Hofer, editor of Paleontology column of Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bergbau und Geowissenschaften e. V., Germany (Mining and Geosciences Working Group).
Short presentation of the club is here.
The exhibit language: German.

Ammonoids are a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda.
These molluscs, commonly referred to as Ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids (i.e., octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.
The earliest ammonites appeared during the Devonian, and the last species either vanished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, or shortly after during the Danian epoch of the Paleocene.
Ammonites are excellent index fossils, and linking the rock layer in which a particular species or genus is found to specific geologic time periods is often possible.
Their fossil shells usually take the form of planispirals, although some helically spiraled and nonspiraled forms (known as heteromorphs) have been found. _Wikipedia