Dear Thomas.,

Here are my ideas on which names seem closest to the photos you have up:

1.   Conus mindanus Hwass in Bruguiere, 1792
2.   Conus mappa granarius Kiener, 1848 (pale adult?)
3.   Conus floridanus (Gabb, 1869) (outside of normal range)
4.   Conus spurius lorenzianus Dillwyn, 1817
5.   Conus attenuatus Reeve, 1844 (Size of specimen?)
6.   Conus mindanus Hwass in Bruguiere, 1792
7.   Conus puncticulatus Hwass in Bruguiere, 1792
8.   Conus garciai, 1982 (possibly an unnamed local form)
9.   Conus jaspideus Gmelin, 1791
10. Conus mappa granarius Kiener, 1848 (juvenile?)
11. Conus mindanus Hwass in Bruguiere, 1792

Number three is very interesting.  It seems closely related to Conus
floridanus, yet to my knowledge your specimen is outside the known range for
this species.  I have not yet checked any of the online databases (Florida
Museum of Natural History or Malacalog) to see if larger collections have
specimens of C. floridanus from off Panama.  There is , however, at least
one published record of C. floridanus burryae being reported from of
Yucatan.

It would help if you would add a size for the specimen to the notes under
your photos.

One or more of these may have been named recently by Petuch who has been
actively collecting and publishing on the species from this area.
Unfortunately, the descriptions of his that I have been able to collect
(either in original or photocopy) generally do not have clear illustrations.
His written descriptions also seldom have comparative information on how the
species he is proposing differs from similar species named by other authors.
I am not aware of any book (or internet site) by another author that has
good illustrations of his type material.  This type material has been
distributed to a variety of collections (public and private), so it would
probably be a costly and lengthy task to collect good photos of all of his
cone species and put them in one place.

Hope this helps.

Bill Fenzan
Norfolk, Virginia, USA



----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Duda <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 10:12 PM
Subject: Western Atlantic Conus ID help


> Greetings,
>
> Any and all who may be able to help ID some cones from the western
Atlantic (Panama to be exact), please give the following page a try and
email me with suggestions. (Hope the page works -- it at least loads from
here!)
>
> http://www.geocities.com/tfduda6/identifications.html
>
> Thanks much,
> Tom
>