Hello all I am in the process of a much needed re-identification of my Caloosahatchee fossil material and I am having problems getting a grasp of the olives. I have found that the comment that Olsson and Harbinson make in their 1953 work on the Caloosahatchee mollusks from St. Petersburg in which "fossil olives which have lost their color are difficult shells to identify" is an understatement. In that same publication they writhe that the common Oliva at that site did not confirm with either Oliva sayana or O. reticularis but seemed closer to the latter and named it as a subspecies of O. reticularis. I have numerous olives from multiple Caloosahatchee localities and the majority are O. sayana. I have a few that are probably the same as those of O&H however they bare very little resemblance to O. reticularis/fulgurator. If anything they look more like Oliva carolinenesis from the Upper Pliocene but with a more tapering body like O. reticularis. Petuch calls the common olive in the Caloosahatchee Oliva rosae and I do not have the publication in which he names it. I feel that most of his Oliva species are variations of O. sayana however I would like to know if O. rosae is the naming of the species that O&H called a subspecies of O. reticularis. I could call it Oliva sp. but my OCD will not allow that :) Any help in what I should call this olive would be appreciated. Mike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask] - a forum for informal discussions on molluscs To leave this list, click on the following web link: http://listserv.uga.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=conch-l&A=1 Type your email address and name in the appropriate box and click leave the list. ----------------------------------------------------------------------