These nektonic carnivores lived in marine habitats in what is now Europe, during the Triassic, from the upper-most Anisian to the lower Ladinian age.

The frilly pattern would increase the strength of the shell and allow Ceratites to dive deeper, possibly in search of food.

[citation needed] Fossils of this genus are only known from the Germanic Basin, which formed a partially isolated shallow sea across much of Europe from eastern France north of the future Alps and into Poland, separated from the Tethys by 3 gates that variably opened.

Following the hyper saline Mittlerer Muschelkalk unit with its frequent evaporite deposits, a renewed opening of some of the gates to the Tethys brought full marine incursions that initially saw the arrival of mass occurrences of the crinoid Encrinus liliiformis captured by the often massive Trochitenkalk units at the base of the oberer Muschelkalk.

The genus Ceratites is currently best understood to be an endemic direct descendant of these forms evolving in place through a sequence of chronospecies that can be traced throughout the ~3.5 million year long existence of the Germanic Basin sea of the upper Muschelkalk layers until the basin once again fully cut off from the Tethys and was subject to evaporites at the transition to the Keuper sedimentary units, at which point the genus Ceratites most likely went extinct, leaving no descendants.