These include 22 families and some 165 or so genera (Teichert and Moore 1964) Shimansky 1962 (in Kummel 1964) divided the Nautilida into five suborders, the mostly Paleozoic Centroceratina, Liroceratina, Rutoceratina, and Tainoceratina, and the Mesozoic to recent Nautilina.

Rousseau Flower (1950) distinguished the Solenochilida, Rutoceratida, and Centroceratida, as separate orders, from the Nautilida, derived from the Barrandeocerida, which are now abandoned.

Both Shimansky and Kummel derive the Nautilida from the Oncocerida with either the Acleistoceratidae or Brevicoceratidae (Teichert 1988) which share some similarities with the Rutoceratidae as the source.

Flower (1950) suggested the Nautilida evolved from the Barrandeocerida, an idea he came later to reject in favor of derivation from the Oncocerida.

The idea that the Nautilida evolved from straight-shelled ("Orthoceras") nautiloids, as proposed by Otto Schindewolf in 1942, through transitional forms such as the Ordovician Lituites can be rejected out of hand as evolutionarily unlikely.

43–44) Miocene nautilids were still fairly widespread, but today the order includes only two genera, Nautilus and Allonautilus, limited to the southwest Pacific.

[2] The genus Aturia seem to have temporarily survive regions where pinnipeds were present through adaptations to fast and agile swimming, but eventually went extinct as well.

[3] Predation by short-snouted whales and the development of OMZs, preventing nautilids from retreating into deeper water, are also cited as other potential causes of extinction.