I was just browsing the web, looking for images of one particular kind of cowry
when I came upon a page where some people had asked for IDs on cowries that they
had acquired.

The page is at
http://www.seashell-collector.com/identification/cypreidae.htm
and the shell in question was identified as a juvenile Cypraea schilderorum. If
one looks at the set of images, however, which were supplied, the basal view
shows that the teeth are (already) stained brown. That is the missed clue that
the cowry is actually a juvenile C. tessellata.

I learned this lesson very early as the FIRST tessellata that I ever collected
was just like the one shown (without the basal growth mark). It took me two
weeks to find someone to ID it. That happened to be the late Ellis Cross. This
was back in the early 1970s but I've never forgotten it.

The similarities are hardly accidental and I carry on and on about it in my
Research area of www.cowrys.org, some might say "ad nauseam."

Aloha,

Bob Dayle
http://www.cowrys.org/research/

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