Anyone up for a new topic?(i'm personally a tad tired of
doo-doo-doodling around!).
  I am occassionally confronted with a malformation or "freak" that i
just cannot figure out. The majority are rather obvious- mutations,
other organisms inviting them out for lunch in a rather forceful manner,
being caught between two rocks or other hard places, getting something
caught in various places, percussion injuries, etc..  However, sometimes
the cause of a particular wierdism is quite obscure.  The shell the
subject refers to is a Conus aulicus L. , with a dent in the body whorl-
a depression in the shell, roughly circular, with no clues as to its
cause: it is not surrounded by stress fractures, and the pattern is not
disturbed.  Being a fish-muncher, C. aulicus is very active, so it could
not stay still long enough to be dented in any way, at least not without
a growth line or two to show from the event.  The interior underneath
the dent, which can be seen be peering far inside, barely registers the
surface contour at all, which is odd because it is nearly a centimetre
deep.
        Any theories???
                                                                                        -Ross M.