Gastropods Sea Shells Reference

Information provided with the permission of The Academy of Natural Sciences,Philadelphia, PA. - explicit reference is now made to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia where I have no other reference. I would like to acknowledge what a marvellous site it is. I have made (and continue to make) heavy use of the site, especially in checking and in expanding some of the areas not covered by popular books.
Many type species of Conidae are now illustrated. Thanks are due to the remarkable library of images taken by Mike Filmer and to all the many institutions, worldwide, for enabling this material to be made available to such a wide audience. In addition, I have followed the sequences and naming conventions in his remarkable book (see below) which should be in every cone fan's collection as the best ever statement of current knowledge of a genus - if only similar tomes were available for other families, eg Epitoniids!

I have recently bought my copy of John Tucker's truly monumental book on Turrids. It answers more questions than it raises and is an astonishing culmination of a lifetime's work.

Catalog of recent and fossil turrids, John K. Tucker
A Catalogue of Nomenclature and Taxonomy in the Living Conidae, Mike Filmer
Conchological Iconography - Harpidae, Ficidae, Strombidae
Oliva Shells, Bernard Tursch & Dietmar Greifeneder
Atlas of the Living Olive Shells of the World, Edward J. Petuch & Dennis M. Sargent
Fauna of Australia, 1998 for Family to Class structure
Lorenz & Hubert for Cowries,
Röckel, Korn & Kohn for Cones,
Poppe & Goto for Volutes,
Bratcher & Cernohorsky for Terebrids
Kreipl for Cassids
Houart for various Muricids
Henning & Hemmen for Ranellidae & Personidae
Cossigniani for Bursidae
Lipe for Marginellidae
Liltved for South African Cypraeidae/Triviidae
Fehse in Acta Conchyliorum, December, 2001 for Ovulidae
Latiaxis and Its Related Groups, Kosuge & Suzuki
A Master Index to Species Names in the Family Epitoniidae, Bruce Neville
Followed suggestions by Gijs Kronenberg on raising many strombid subgenera to full genus status

Classification and Nomenclator of Gastropod Families

elsewhere shell pages are in alphabetic sequence by species within genus - within subgenus where I felt that was useful for grouping similar shells together.
because genus names seem variable, I have also included index pages by initial letter of species.
the list of reference works grows regularly and it takes me some time to update the catalogue when a large new reference work is acquired so not all the titles may yet been included in the appropriate shell pages.

index pages - an asterisk (*) in front of a shell name indicates that that shell is illustrated.

Navigation - alphabetically by species

A AL AR AU B BL C CE CO CR D DI E EP F FO G GR H I J K L LI
M MC MO N O P PE PL PU Q R RO S SE SP T TH TR U V VI W X Y Z

Return button - back to the Home Page
Left Arrow - to previous species in same Genus/subgenus - usually by alphabetic order of species
Right Arrow - to next species in same Genus/subgenus
Question Arrow - to Guidelines

Choosing a letter (or pair) - to an index page listing all species or subspecies whose initial letters are between the letter(s) double clicked and the next in the list, regardless of genus. E.g. double clicking on AL will produce the page listing all (sub)species beginning with al.. to aq.. inclusive. I find this extremely helpful where several genus names seem to be in contention but the species names are constant.

Navigation - by taxonomy

Taxonomic Information
Class	GASTROPODA
Order	OPISTHOBRANCHIATA
SuperFamily	ACTEONACEA
Family	ACTEONIDAE

Selecting Class, Order, SuperFamily or Family will take you to an index page for the selected name
takes you one level back up in the heirarchy, from Family to Superfamily to Order

Release history

	Page/Plate
Release Number	Date	Features
20.06	20th April 2008	Releasing some of the work done while I was travelling. 41,550 taxa including 10,079 synonyms, 11,844 illustrated with 31,118 images.
20.05	27th December 2007	Bits of tidying up before I went travelling for 3 1/2 months.
20.04	27th November 2007	Lots of tidying up. 41,229 taxa including 9,844 synonyms, 11,707 illustrated with 30,397 images.
20.03	18th November 2007	First pass at Nudibranchs now completed. Moved the publications in which the taxon was first described to the top of the list and made the green colour a little more acceptable. 41,110 taxa including 9,764 synonyms, 11,702 illustrated with 30,169 images.
20.02	13th October 2007	Corrected an error causing many taxa of the genus Philine to appear under the family Trochidae. Also introduced green backgrounds for the publications in which the taxon was first described. eg
Nautilus	Vol 87/4 p91
Compendium of Seashells	278/3.3
Shell Encyclopedia	238
The Shell Handbook	201
Collector's guide to Seashells of the World	152/6
M.B. Pocket Guide to Shells of the World	151
Eyewitness handbooks - Shells	201
20.01	5th October 2007	40,448 taxa including 9,585 synonyms, 11,474 illustrated with 29,493 images. I have started introducing Nudibranchs, at this point only utilizing images from the excellent site of Maurice Jay - Seaslugs of Réunion & Mauritius
20.00	10th August 2007	40,448 taxa including 9,586 synonyms, 11,267 illustrated with 28,764 images. I have changed the treatment of invalidly named taxa - if they are synonyms of a valid taxon they appear on that page (as before), in some cases they continue to appear on a separate page, especially where their names appear in relateviely common usage. Otherwise, there is now a single page for invalid names for each Family. A great deal of work has been done on tidying up the Conus family, largely through the continuing efforts over many months of Paul Kersten who has been a tremendous support to me.
19.00	3rd June 2007	39,507 taxa including 8,710 synonyms, 11,155 illustrated with 28,145 images. I have finished "improving" nearly 5,000 images which were flaring out a lot of detail. The detail is now restored. Checking through the 1,000 actions continues. I have reorganised the directories to improve efficiency. This does mean that all images have been relocated and so any direct links to images will no longer work. I would like to mention here *Didier Gille* who is being immensely helpful finding images from around the web.
18.04	10th May 2007	39,226 taxa including 8,634 synonyms, 11,002 illustrated with 27,820 images. I have removed a significant number of "duplicates" ie same taxon appearing under different genera. Also, I am in the middle of doing a lot of tidying up, first step of which highlighted over 1,000 actions from validating names and spellings to rephotographing images. This will be ongoing for quite a while.
18.03	26th November 2006	39,357 taxa including 8,616 synonyms, 10,884 illustrated with 27,185 images.
18.02	6th November 2006	39,311 taxa including 8,614 synonyms, 10,831 illustrated with 27,011 images.
18.01	14th October 2006	39,293 taxa including 8,490 synonyms, 10,588 illustrated with 26,651 images. Slight change to the background behind the images - looks a bit better now.
18.00	18th September 2006	39,081 taxa including 8,606 synonyms, 10,488 illustrated with 26,091 images.
17.01	14th August 2006	38,817 taxa including 8,364 synonyms, 10,339 illustrated with 25,472 images. Added a few images taken at the Instituto Superior Alejandro Humboldt on the Galapágos Islands.
17.00	23rd June 2006	37,132 taxa including 8,104 synonyms, 10,008 illustrated with 24,932 images. Finally resolved a recently introduced bug causing the forward and back arrows to functino incorrectly.
16.01	23rd March, 2006	36,399 taxa including 7,808 synonyms, 9,804 illustrated with 23,969 images. Modified taxonomic index pages to give authors and types. Modified supra-generic taxonomy in line with Bouchet & Rocroi's "Classification and Nomenclator of Gastropod Families" - no doubt a lot more work will arise from this! Scrapped idea of including all formas, varieties etc on the "parent" taxon page
15.05	29th December, 2005	36,137 taxa including 7,679 synonyms, 9,748 illustrated with 23,767 images. Completed Tucker's mammoth Turrids. Started copyright marking images in response to image suppliers' complaints about rampant plagiarism. No conclusion yet on the possible change in handling to formas. Some pages would have a large number of such entries!
15.04	25^th November, 2005	34,549 taxa including 6,805 synonyms, 9,740 illustrated with 23,667 images. Continued through Tucker's Turrids - 3/4 through now. Considering including all formas, varieties etc on the "parent" taxon pages instead of on separate pages. Any comments?
15.03	10^th September, 2005	33,782 taxa including 6,549 synonyms, 9,692 illustrated with 23,394 images Started checking Turrids against Tucker's book - halfway through so far.
15.02	27^th June, 2005	29,855 taxa including 4,100 synonyms, 9,670 illustrated with 23,140 images
15.01	18^th May, 2005	Introduced family Babyloniidae, merged superfamily Volutoidea into Muricoidea 29,534 taxa including 3,954 synonyms, 9,751 illustrated with 22,490 images
15.00	18^th April, 2005	Got myself an HTML checker - so this is the result! Nothing much to see but the HTML is much more "correct" and so hopefully will survive better in any browser. Only a small number of content changes.
14.00	20^th March, 2005	Lots of software & HTML tidying up. Problems with comms meant this is a much delayed update. 29,405 valid taxa including 3,848 synonyms, 9,751 illustrated with 22,284 images
13.05	20^th November, 2004	Lots of tidying up thanks to advice received from increasing number of sources. 27,280 valid taxa including 2,979 synonyms, 9,371 illustrated with 21,344 images
13.04	1^st October, 2004	Various catch-ups. Renamed Strombid genera by moving subgenera up to full genera. It will be interesting to see what if any response this provokes! 27,165 taxa, 9,245 illustrated with 20,932 images
13.03	17^th July, 2004	Modified lots of images so the thumbnail index pages look much more "regular"
13.02	13^th July, 2004	27,111 taxa, 9,154 illustrated with 20,697 images More work on management of synonyms
13.01	3^rd June, 2004	25,548 taxa, 9,220 illustrated with 20,359 images. Management and presentation of synonyms improved.
12.00	14^th March, 2004	23,930 taxa, 8,634 illustrated with 18,779 images Cones updated with enormous help from Mike Filmer both from his remarkable book (see book list) and from him personally. This genus is now "state-of-the-art". Status of names has now been introduced, primarily as a result of the work done by Mike Filmer
11.02	31^st January, 2004	23,163 taxa, 8,453 illustrated with 18,340 images
11.01	18^th October, 2003	22,728 taxa, 7,813 illustrated with 16,614 images A major review including correction of many synonyms and expansion of smaller genera
11.00	29^th September, 2003	Introduced better way of dealing with the thumbnail indexes. Should be much faster now.
10.04	12^th September, 2003	21,609 taxa, 7,822 illustrated with 16,486 images
10.03	19^th August, 2003	20,043 taxa, 7,818 illustrated with 16,290 images
10.02	13^th July, 2003	19,801 taxa, 7,727 illustrated with 15,995 images
10.01	1^st July, 2003	First step in ordering the thumbnails - Strombus for example go by subgenus.
10.00	1^st July, 2003	After much thought I finally introduced thumbnailed family index pages. Now the problem is getting a good taxonomic ordering so similar shells appear near each other in the thumbnails!!!! Oh, and subgrouping large families like Cones and Cypraea! 19,788 taxa, 7,637 illustrated with 15,665 images
9.01	27^th May, 2003	19,764 taxa, 7,524 illustrated with 15,338 images
9.00	21^st May, 2003	Major file structure change to allow duplicate genus/species combinations (eg Epitonium cancellata occurs 4 times) 19,690 taxa, 7,410 illustrated with 15,020 images
8.00	26th April, 2003	Behind the scenes update. The software managing common names is now fully automatic so discrepancies between navigation pages and target pages should be a thing of the past.
7.45	20th April, 2003	Another big update - few pictures but many more shells added 18,615 taxa, 7,204 illustrated with 14,447 images
7.44	27th March, 2003	A big update after the epic trip around the Caribbean, Panama and up the Amazon as far as Manaus Major inputs from Taurus and Felix Lorenz 14.708 taxa, 7,204 illustrated with 14,434 images
7.43	7th January, 2003	Some tidying up before I disappear around the Caribbean and S America for 2 months
7.42	16th December, 2002	Added the wide range of images from Low Tide Shells 13,548 taxa, 7,154 illustrated with 14,057 images
7.41	5th December, 2002	Catching up after 3 months USA/Canada holiday 13,437 taxa, 6,842 illustrated with 12,889 images
7.40	1st September, 2002	Expanded Epitoniidae section dramatically, mainly following Bruce Neville's 1997 work "A Master Index to Species Names in the Family Epitoniidae" 13,312 taxa, 6,604 illustrated with 12,208 images
7.39	26th August, 2002	12,191 taxa, 6,579 illustrated with 12,028 images Added "names" of images - faster users may not notice!
7.38	22nd August, 2002	11,804 taxa, 6,570 illustrated with 12,015 images
7.37	2nd August, 2002	11,724 taxa, 6,528 illustrated with 11,837 images
7.36	11th July, 2002	Changed home, country (NL to UK), life-style, email address, service provider 11,505 taxa, 6,343 illustrated with 11,418 images
7.35	2nd June, 2002	11,473 taxa, 6,263 illustrated with 11,080 images
7.34	26th May, 2002	11,369 taxa, 6,241 illustrated with 11,020 images
7.33	15th May, 2002	11,297 taxa, 6,102 illustrated with 10,708 images
7.32	27th April, 2002	9,033 images of 5,421 different species etc
7.31	24th April, 2002	9,008 images of 5,418 different species etc
7.30	2nd April, 2002	8,832 images of 5,363 different species etc
7.25	18th March, 2002	Apart from new images, synchronised Ovulidae with the D. Fehse paper in Acta Conchyliorum, December, 2001
7.20	2nd February, 2002	Fixed the case sensitivity and a couple of other problems
7.11	30th January, 2002	Moved to new service provider as my employers are downsizing (me and the server!) - big problems (new site is case-sensitive)
7.10	25th October, 2001	Revised Oliva following Tursch & Greifeneder, 2001.Not sure if they have the weight of authority but their splendid book certainly has the authority of weight!! Over 10,000 named forms, species, synonyms Over 8,000 images of 5,000 species/forms
7.00	5th May, 2001	Added version 1 of Common Name indexing
6.00	19th April, 2001	Introduced the Family to Class structure described in Fauna of Australia, 1998 7,200 images of 4,700 named species/forms Radically improved database access method
5.10	25^th October, 2000	More Mitres and Costellaridae thanks to Manfred Hermann. New contributor, Roger Rule, from Hawaii sending many interesting images. . . . and LOTS of superb images including many of less 'popular' shells from Kwansei Data Base Now nearly 6,900 images of over 4,500 named species/forms
5.9	11th September, 2000	Some improvements to Mitres and Costellaridae thanks to Manfred Hermann. Ever more images. now 5,990 illustrating 3,940 named species/forms
5.8	25th July, 2000	Ever more images. now 5,480 illustrating 3,800 named species/forms
5.7	4th April, 2000	First of the new millenium and coming upto 4th birthday. Now 4,829 images from over 60 contributors illustrating 3,307 named species/forms, which means the site covers more shells even than the marvellous Compendium of Seashells, Abbot & Dance which has 3,097 gastropods (in the first edition)! Each version usually tightens up sequencing as I find reliable sources - the Femorale family list was very helpful in this latest version.
5.6	10th December, 1999	More images (and more to come - day job getting in the way at the moment) Now over 3,000 illustrated species.
5.5	6th September, 1999	Added the new, excellent-looking Conchological Iconography - Harpidae by Poppe & Groh & Shells of the Philippines and at last got some sort of subgenus classification to Olives using Petuch & Sargent
5.4	15th July, 1999	Habe & Ito books added - difficult as the books are in Japanese and the binomial names have many interesting errors (mainly spelling) - but 500 more shells now have references to pictures. Also first part of Poppe & Groh's Conchological Iconography on Harps Ever more people sending images for including in the site!
5.3	19th May, 1999	More and better images - now over 3,600 images of 2,600 species. Most new ones thanks to Guido Poppe again but check out the Conus spurius pages!
5.2	8th February, 1999	More images
5.1	18th January, 1999	Replaced lots of poorer images Easier referencing to find shells in books with lots of shells per page (not completed for all books yet) Great Xenophoridae images thanks to Mike and Kathy Gage The number of contributors keeps growing - Russell Webb's images of NW USA shells are excellent and I look forward to many more from him
5.0	16th November, 1998	Amended Cypraea as per Lorenz list, July, 1998 More images - 2,900 illustrating 2,100 different shells Improved the taxonomy navigation by separating the Family index pages, and by adding ability to "back-up" from Family to Superfamily to Class in the navigation pages Internally, restructured all the directories for performance and ease of maintenance . . . and have recently moved to own domain
4.2	1st August, 1998	Acknowledgements for photos on every page. Lots more images (thanks mainly to a - George Sangiouloglou& b - my new digital camera) Now 2,600 images of 1,900 shells
4.1	23rd June, 1998	LOTS more images (thanks mainly to Guido Poppe) Started moving to classification as per Ponder & Warén, 1988 (this will be continuous from now on!) Broke up Alphabetic indexing to reduce index page sizes
4.0	6th April, 1998	Added Shell size information
3.1	23rd March, 1998	Removed last traces of non-Gastropods. More shells, tidying up synonyms (never ending!) More pictures (more of my own plus thanks to everyone who sends images).
3.0	27th January, 1998	Removed non-Gastropods. More shells, more pictures, more books.
2.4	8th December, 1997	More shells, more pictures, more books.
2.3	6th October, 1997	Added subspecies/forms to alphabetic search pages. (eg Conus nobilis skinneri now under "nobilis" on N page and "skinneri" on SH page) Introduced magazines / volume information (small change on web page, huge change in the underlying database structure!)
2.2	19th August, 1997	More Pictures Removed my cabinet references from on-line version
2.1	23rd July, 1997	Fixed a bug causing Internet Explorer format problems in "tree" pages Lots of "Authors" and Years of description added.but not to Cypraeidae, Conidae, Volutidae
2	14th July, 1997	Several Bugs Removed (This is a Conchology site, not Entomology) Many More Shells (Total 5,000 excluding synonyms) Many More Images (1,500 illustrations of 1,200 shells) Better Taxonomic Order (especially Cowries,Cones, Volutes) Moved to AT&T-Unisource Site
1	1996	Initial Version test pages

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Guidelines & Notes

Navigation - alphabetically by species

Navigation - by taxonomy