Ammonites

Ammonites, Neal Monks and Philip Palmer, 2002, Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN 1-58834-024-4

A mostly descriptive book, it’s filled with excellent photos. Worth a read just to get the terminology down - there’s a lot of research on ammonoids, and they’re common fossils both to find and to buy in shops. Contains some ammonoid ecology and a few life reconstructions. Only 141 pages, with an appropriate glossary.

As a companion piece, you could read Klug, C. and Korn, D. 2004. The origin of ammonoid locomotion. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 49 (2): 235-242. Lots of discussion of bouyancy, hydrodynamic drag, and how evolving a coiled shell solves some locomotion problems.

Also worth a listen, Paleaocast’s naked ammonite and ammonoid evolution and ecology episodes. Christian Klug, one of the authors of The origin of ammonoid locomotion, is the interviewee of the “naked ammonite” episode.