Hamites (genus)

Hamites ("hook-like") is a genus of heteromorph ammonite that evolved late in the Aptian stage of the Early Cretaceous and lasted into the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. The genus is almost certainly paraphyletic but remains in wide use as a "catch all" for heteromorph ammonites of the superfamily Turrilitoidea that do not neatly fit into the more derived groupings. In an attempt to identify clades within the genus, it has been divided up into a series of new genera or subgenera by different palaeontologists, including Eohamites, Hamitella, Helicohamites, Lytohamites, Planohamites, Psilohamites, and Sziveshamites.

The type species is Hamites attenuatus from the early Albian, named by James Sowerby in his Mineral Conchology of Great Britain of 1814, although the genus itself was created by James Parkinson in his 1811 book Organic Remains of the Former World. This James Parkinson is best known as the first scientific description of a disease he called the Shaking Palsy, now referred to as Parkinson's disease in his honour.