Reconstructions of the body within the shell can be made to portray Scaphites as either a benthic (bottom-dwelling) or planktonic animal, depending on where the center of gravity is located.

Since useful fossils of the soft-body parts of cephalopods are highly rare, little is known about how this animal actually fit into its shell and lived its life.

[citation needed] Because Scaphites and its relatives in the superfamily Scaphitoidea are restricted to certain ages of the Cretaceous (ca.

A notable example is the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway in North America, in which several endemic lineages of scaphite species evolved and now serve as the basis for a highly resolved regional biostratigraphy.

Fossils of Scaphites have been found in Antarctica, Armenia, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories), Denmark, France, Germany, Greenland, India, Italy, Japan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming).