Hello Peter,

Yes, this is a fascinating shell. It's probably rare because nobody
collected on the right place for two decades. I found only a few
valves on a beach in Baja California in the past. When I went in the
water sharks and skates were swimming between my legs, so I got out
after 30 minutes: but the sand yielded hundreds of bivalves a square
meter, never seen this elsewhere. It's sister species P. dione is
probably the same case: on one beach on Margarita Island I collected
once (out of 4 trips there) several hundred adults, none with spines.
The water on that place is not with any visibility, so no diving for
perfect ones possible. But I never found it elsewhere despite
screening several hundred places between Martinique and Margarita and
all along the coast up to Caracas.

Guido
The sun is coming up here but the cold is still there. The Mitrids
are great.



> Hi all,
>
> I have always wondered about the rarity of Pitar lupinaria, both in
> the wild and in collections.
> I bought one specimen (a stunning near-perfect baby one) back in
> the 1980s from a fellow
> member of the Vancouver Shell Club. Since then I have scoured the
> dealers lists for more
> specimens hand have never seen one offered. Hmmm. Is this because
> of their fragility or for
> some other reason? Are they never offered simply because it's
> impossible to get a nice
> specimen with all the spines intact? Just wondering. It really has
> to be my favorite bivalve -
> I mean, wow, what an amazing thing! It's one of the shells I love
> to show to non-shell-collector
> friends when they do the "tour of the collection".
>

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