First appearing in the fossil record 410 million years ago, ammonites remained a dominant aquatic family for hundreds of millions of years until the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. In that time, there were over 10,000 individual species of ammonites, each with its own unique traits and adaptations. In fact, there was so much diversity that some individuals have dedicated their entire collections to focus solely on the different species of ammonites.
