Prehistoric Pokemon: Omanyte and Omastar/Ammonites
If you’re not familiar with how the Pokemon games operate: Pokemon are usually found and caught in the wild, by wandering around in environments where they’d appear. This is not always the case, however, and one exception is the fossil Pokemon. These Pokemon actually originate as fossilized specimens, which can be brought back to life through science-fiction technology.
The first generation of Pokemon games - Red, Blue, and Yellow - introduced three evolutionary lines of fossil Pokemon, none of which, surprisingly enough, were based on dinosaurs. You’d think it would be obvious, but a lot of non-fossil first-gen Pokemon were dinosaur-like to begin with.
The first-ever fossil Pokemon, Omanyte, has a pretty obvious basis - an ammonite! It’s right in the name!
(The ammonite Asteroceras, by Nobu Tamura.)
Ammonites (subclass Ammonoidea) were cephalopoid molluscs related to octopodes, squid, and cuttlefish. They are distinguished from modern cephalopods by their shells. Although the shell was likely useful for protection, this wasn’t its main purpose; it was filled with a number of empty chambers that could be filled with water and vented, allowing the ammonite to increase and decrease its weight to adjust its height in the water.
Since the soft portions of ammonites almost never fossilize, paleontologists must attempt to figure out the habits and behavior of these animals from their shells alone. However, even with such incomplete evidence, it’s apparent that the ammonites were a highly successful group of animals, and came in all shapes and sizes to fill a diverse set of niches. Some ammonites had lightweight shells that were laterally flattened like the bodies of fish, enabling rapid movement through the water; others had thicker, heavier shells suited to a more bottom-dwelling lifestyle. The shells themselves took on numerous odd shapes; while the stereotypical ammonite possesses a tight “ram’s-horn” coil, some had helix-coils like snails, and others were perfectly straight. One genus, Nipponites (pictured above - image from Palaeopedia), had a shell with a bizarre asymmetrical arrangement of U-shaped curves, the purpose of which is unknown.
At level 40, Omanyte evolves into Omastar. While in-game lore establishes Omanyte as a peaceful bottom-dwelling plankton-feeder, Omastar was a predator that cracked open the shells of mollusc Pokemon with its four muscular arms and sucked out their soft inner bodies with its four-part beak. A classic case of niche differentiation!
(As a side note, Omastar also bears a striking resemblance to ammonites of the genus Hypoturrilites. It’s possible that this was intentional, but there’s no real evidence either way.)
Unfortunately, Omastar’s protection became its downfall. Its heavy shell made it difficult for Omastar to catch prey, and as a result, the species died out. Actual ammonites did not die out for such clear-cut reasons; they survived for almost 350 million years before dying out during the Cretaceous mass extinction, from causes that are still not certain.
The only shelled cephalopods that survive today are the nautiloids, represented by two genera - Nautilus and Allonautilus. Despite their appearances, the nautiloids are not close relatives of the ammonites, belonging to a completely different subclass of the Cephalopoda. Nautlius (pictured above; photo by Professor Lee R. Berger of Wits University) is the better-understood of these two genera, while Allonautilus is native to much deeper water and has rarely been observed or collected alive.
Both genera of nautiloids are at risk due to overfishing and climate change. If you can, please donate to ocean conservationist causes; unlike those in the Pokemon world, we can’t bring these beautiful animals back to life when they’re gone.
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