Speaking of Stenorhytis,
Quite a few good pernobilis came up in Riley Black's dredging in the
1960's off DeSoto Canyon in the Gulf of Mexico at 125 fathoms, but as
Art mentioned the great ones seem to be about an inch, with the largest
one I got measuring 1 1/2" tall, but not in great shape.  Some came with
the operculum.  I remember the bushels of dredging the Black's sold for
$35.00 each did not yield a lot of species, but going through the
bushels of dredging was fun and certainly found shells you would not
find on the beach.
The first COA bourse I attended was in 1983 in Sarasota, Florida.  There
was a S. turbinum at a dealer's table for $75.00!  Really.  I thought
about it for a while, went back to look at it and of course it was sold.
Go to COA in Louisville! You never know what you will find at the
Bourse.

Several years after missing out on that shell, my parents bought a S.
turbinum (dredged live several years before at 200 meters off the south
coast of Santa Cruz, Galapagos) for me for Christmas.  What a present!
What great parents!  The shell, w/o is about 1 1/2" tall with part of
the spire missing, but fortunately does not have the pitting mentioned
with the holotype and only a few of the costae are worn. Unfortunately,
it is not as pristine white a color the smaller live pernobilis are.

So the Stenorhytis are out there, but not in great numbers.

If you can't collect naiads, Epitoniums are a pretty good substitute. .
.

Alan Gettleman
Merritt Island, FL



Art Weil wrote:
>
> Dear Sarah;-
>         I wrote this note before than hit the wrong button. Yes; E. turbinum is
> very rare. We photographed it at ASNM. (or something like that). E.
> pernobilis is not quite that rare. But rare enough and expensive enough
> to evade my collection. What amazes me about them is that they are only
> about an inch or so. They look much larger, what with all the wild
> sculptering on them. Federico Sacco published a plate of Ep fossils.
> There seem to have been a lot more Sts during the Miocene, Pliocene, and
> other ---cene eras. Perhaps, like the Komodo Dragon, our turbinum and
> pernobilis are "living fossils".
>         Art