Paraceltitidae is a family of Middle and Upper Permian cephalopod

Cephalopod

A cephalopod is any member of the molluscan class Cephalopoda . These exclusively marine animals are characterized by bilateral body symmetry, a prominent head, and a set of arms or tentacles modified from the primitive molluscan foot...

s, that comprise the earliest of the Ceratitida

Ceratitida

The Ceratitida is an order that contains almost all ammonoid cephalopod genera from the Triassic as well as ancestral forms from the Upper Permian, the exception being the phylloceratids which gave rise to the great diversity of post Triassic ammonites....

. Paraceltitidids have variably ribbed, discoidaly evolute shells with compressed elliptical whorl sections and simple suture lines. Their origin is most likely in the Daraelitidae

Daraelitidae

The Daraelitidae form a family in the ammonoid order Prolecanitida from the Upper Mississippian - Middle Permian characterized by discoidal shells with no prominent sculpture, moderately large umbilicus, and goniatitic or ceratitic sutures with a trifid ventral lobe and few auxiliary lobes.The...

 of the Prolecanitida

Prolecanitida

The Prolecanitida are extinct ammonoid cephalopods with discoidal to thinly lenticular shells with goniatitic or ceratitic sutures and which retained the simple retrochoanitic siphuncle with backward extending septal necks. As typical for ammonoids the siphuncle is along the ventral margin...

 and they are the apparent source of the Xenodiscidae

Xenodiscidae

The Xenodiscidae are the earliest of the Ceratitida and comprise Middle and Upper Permian genera characterized by compressed, discoidal, evolute shells with rounded to acute venters and commonly with lateral ribs...

. All together they lived for some 12 million years, from about 270.6 to about 258 million years ago.

Paraceltitidae was named by Spath in 1930, however the taxon is omitted in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology Part L, 1957

Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology

The Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology published by the Geological Society of America and the University of Kansas Press, is a definitive multi-authored work of some 50 volumes, written by more than 300 paleontologists, and covering every phylum, class, order, family, and genus of fossil and...

 wherein respective genera are included in the Xenodiscidae. The family has returned to recognition and has been used by Tozer, 1981 and more recently by Leonova in 2002 and by Korn

Dieter Korn

Dr. Dieter Korn is a German scientist and paleontologist specializing in research on ammonites and goniatites. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Tübingen and is employed by the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Germany, in the Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and...

in 2006.