FIGURE 1. 1, distribution of fossil cuttlefish (blue star) and Actinosepia (red circle) records (Late Cretaceous-Eocene). 2, Distribution of fossil cuttlefish (purple square) (Oligocene-Pleistocene). See Košťák et al. (2016) (their figure 1 and 10) for more detailed distribution of fossil cuttlefish of Central Paratethys and the Mediterranean area during Miocene-Pliocene. (Data from the Paleobiology Database, distribution plotted using Alroy [2013], equirectangular projection, reconstruction for 30 Ma and other literature, with additions from Weaver et al., [2010a] and other authors).
FIGURE 2. Cuttlebone of Sepia sp. (right) next to a seagrass ball (left) from strandline on beach in Sardinia. Note leaves of seagrass Posidonia in top half of picture. (GF collection)
FIGURE 3. Number of global records of fossil Sepia (pale blue), Cosmopolitodus hastalis (dark blue), sirenians (grey), Phocidae (red). Sirenians indicate possible extent of seagrass, phocid seals and C. hastalis represent possible cuttlefish predators in seagrass. The graph indicates that the four taxa reached their peak in the early-middle Miocene and then declined to the late Pliocene. Because of poor preservation of cuttlefish their graph is more suggestive than for the other marine vertebrates (data from Paleobiology Database, Sepia records from Košťák et al., 2016 supplement and those noted in text).
