Argonaut's Chambered Nautilus Logo #2 Close-In
ARTIST: William Louis ("Bill") McDonald Senior.
COMPANY: Argonaut-GreyWolf, which was incepted in 1978.
PURPOSE: Another Argonaut's Pacific Rim Line clothing and business card logo. As an element within the much larger Argonaut Anthologies Multimedia poster, this all-inclusive living primordial mollusk created for itself an amazing logo for active wear and sportswear clothing. There are actually three extremely rare and endangered Nautilus pompilius pearly or chambered nautilus inked into the poster with quill point pen nibs.
CLIENT: The Argonaut Anthologies Multimedia Poster from 1986.
YEAR: It was rendered in January of 1986.
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MEDIA: Multiple F&W colored quill point inks along with Dr. Martin colored quill point inks along with black Higgins India ink on acid-free high quality art paper.
NOTES: The predatory and very hungry Nautilus pompilius chambered nautilus who is also known as the pearly nautilus is one of six species of nautilus, the only cephalopod mollusks (squids, octopuses, and relatives) that have external shells and is the best-known of all six extremely endangered species of nautilus.
They enjoy about 90 cirri (referred to as "tentacles", see Nautilus § Cirri) that do not have suckers, differing significantly from the limbs of coleoids. Chambered nautiluses, again like all members of the genus, have a pair of rhinophores located near each eye which detect chemicals, and use olfaction and chemotaxis to find their food.
The shell, when cut away, reveals a lining of lustrous nacre and displays a nearly perfect equiangular spiral, although it is not a golden spiral. Unique life-history characteristics such as slow growth rates, low fecundity, and long generation and gestation times also make the chambered nautilus vulnerable to even low levels of fishing intensity. In this sense the species is more similar to oceanic sharks than its cousins, squids and octopi.
Their ancestry traces back to the most primordial coiled nautiloids of the late Cambrian Fengshan Formation of northeastern China circa 541 million years ago.
The oldest fossils of the species are known from Early Pleistocene sediments deposited off the coast of Luzon in the Philippines.
The first and oldest fossil of Chambered Nautilus displayed at the Philippine National Museum.
Although once thought to be a living fossil, the chambered nautilus is now considered taxonomically very different from ancient ammonites (The ammonoids group which includes the ammonites and the goniatites) are extinct cousins of the nautiloids that evolved early in the Devonian period, some 400 million years ago) and the recent fossil record surrounding the species shows more genetic diversity among nautiluses now than has been found since the extinction of the dinosaurs. Indeed, the taxon of the chambered nautilus, Nautilus pompilius is actually a grouping of tens of different species of nautilus under one name.
All nautilus species are threatened due to overfishing for their shell, which primarily is used for jewelry and other ornamental artifacts. In 2016, they were moved to CITES Appendix II, which restricts international trade, and later the chambered nautilus was recognized as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
LOCATION: The McDonald Family dining room in Monarch Bay Terrace, Monarch Beach, California in 1986.
MODEL: As carnivores and scavengers, chambered nautiluses have been described as eating "anything that smells" feeding on underwater carrion, detritus, living shellfish and crab.
The second of three chambered nautiluses incorporated as quill-point ink elements in the overall poster.
MODEL: My models included an ancient Greek Penteconter ship Argo along with elements within an Ionian Sea reef, along with the juvenile finback whale, Jason's Argonauts, and the chambered nautilus cephalopod. The poster sold worldwide.
Check it out! "Dead Greeks in the Reef!" My models included daggers, swords and helmets from the Bronze Age Greek bronze age weapons from Mykenai (Mycenae), Akhaia (Achaea), and Minoan cultures.