I reckon a bucket of shells on a sail boat rocks
around enough there is a little bit of wear and there
is also usually some periostracum or algae or coral or
something that gets removed during cleaning. When I
say shrink, I'm only talking a fraction of a mm, but
enough to throw me off when I've got, for example, six
Conus circumcisus all of similar size collected off a
WWII wreck at night, at 80 feet, while being circled
by sharks in the middle of nowhere in the Solomon
Islands anchored off a dangerous village inhabited by
armed rebels in an area where a native was recently
kiled by a salt water crocodile. So, when I'm done
cleaning these circumcisus and I'm trying to match
opercs to shells, and the shells are a few tenths of a
mm less than the original recorded size, and some of
the shells started out only 0.5 mm different in size
to start, it is enough to get noticed.

J&L Flynn



--- "J. Ross Mayhew" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> John and Lynette Flynn <[log in to unmask]> wrote
> that their cones
> tended to shrink during the "cleaning process".
> This is a surprise to
> hear, for certain!!  Does anyone know how this might
> happen?  I am
> really curious about this!!
>
> - the JR nobody ever shot.
>
>
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