Beautiful, large sculpture with six (!) fossil Orthoceras specimens weighing no less than 2.2 kilograms! Orthoceras (Squid) Era: Ordovician 485-443 million years Location: Atlas Mountains, Morocco Weight: 2206 grams / 2.2 kilograms Sizes: 235 mm high x 110 mm wide x 89 mm deep This cephalopod squid had a tapered, cylindrical, cone-shaped shell with densely spaced chambers, containing a hollow and a spherical septum (septum), with a connecting tube, the sipho, in the center. The length of the shell was about fifteen centimeters. Orthoceras was a mollusk, so the only thing that is fossilized (petrified) is 'the vertebra' of the squid. Orthoceras is an extinct genus of molluscs that lived during the Middle Ordovician. The Ordovician is a period of the geological time scale that lasted approximately from 485 to 443 million years ago. The Ordovician is part of the Paleozoic Era, it follows the Cambrian and is succeeded by the Silurian. The Ordovician was a period with a relatively warm climate and high sea level, with the brief exception of an ice age in the Late Ordovician. Life still mainly took place in the water. Successful groups of marine animals included cuttlefish and graptoliths. The first jawless fish also appeared in the Ordovician. Orthoceras was a good swimmer, feeding on carrion and small animals. The shell always remained in a horizontal position while swimming.