No, I wouldn't think so.  The foot of a gastropod must be one of the most
powerful muscle groups in all 'animaldom'.  Big snail shells tend to have
big bodies.  Evolution works all this out.  I've collected Ryssota
otaheitana angulata on Luzon.  The shell is about 4 inches in diameter.
The body can exceed 8 inches in full flight.  They are a little scary to
pick up the first time and carrying more than a few back to camp is tiring.
 
Kurt
 
At 01:57 PM 4/5/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Another question:  Is there a maximum size and weight for a land
>dwelling gastropod shell before the boneless nature of the animal is
>unable to support it?
>
>Tom Eichhorst in New Mexico, USA
>
>Andrew K. Rindsberg wrote:
>>
>> According to a news item in American Paleontologist (v. 7, no. 1, p. 14;
>> Feb. 1999), Frank Wesselingh and Edmund Gittenberger recently discovered a
>> Miocene land snail from the Amazon region of Colombia. They reported
>> specimens up to 25.6 cm long (about 10 inches). Unfortunately, they were
>> not able to collect complete specimens. The full report is in Veliger (v.
>> 42, p. 67; 1999), a journal that, unlike Doug Shelton's Malacological
>> Expositor, does exist, although not in any of the local libraries.
>>
>> That's a pretty big snail, and I have to wonder how large its radula was.
>> Here's a question for the gastropodologists: Is there any relationship
>> between the size of a snail's shell and the size of its radula?
>>
>> Andrew K. Rindsberg
>> Geological Survey of Alabama
>> Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA
>