Dear Listers,
in my group, the scaphopods, most of the shells -except the trival ones like
Dentalium elephantinum are not correctly identified. Its not the fault of
the dealers but there are not much good monographs and recent specialists
with this group and most of the Dentalia look alike even at the second
glance. Even in museum collections a lot of scaphopods are misidentfied to
my experience.
I greatly appreciate the efforts of some dealers to supply me and other
collectors with scaphopods under various names or as "spec.?". Sometimes
even a common name reveals a new or rare species.
The discussion on exact grading the shells is valid primarly for those
collectors who have their very interest in the display of their shells
(which is a nice and honourable fashion), but I think there are some other
collectors like me, who are more interested in the species, not the shell
per se. You may call us "scientific" collectors e.g. For me the problem are
wrong or missing data and that the dealers try to "clean" the shells to make
them look better but destroying in this way valuable biological information
(e.g. corals on scaphopd shells).

Best wishes to all and a happy christmas and a good shelling in the New
Year!
Bernd Sahlmann
from Munich

----- Original Message -----
From: "E. Heiman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2005 12:22 AM
Subject: Diagnosing shells


> Dear Listers,
> maybe it is interesting to discuss also several  additional questions
> related to grading shells:
> 1. is it important that specimens are correctly identified?
> 2. what are definitions and criteria for their correct identification?
> 3. is it possible to reach a consensus among dealers and collectors
> regarding  the above questions? How?
> What do you think?
> Ed
>
> Eduard Heiman [log in to unmask]
>
>
>

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