Why remove the encrusting animals at all? The plants and animals that bore, drill, gnaw, and encrust shells form a rich community, especially in the warmer parts of the ocean. They can include algae, foraminifera, sponges, corals, polychaete worms, bryozoans, bivalves, gastropods, echinoids, and many others. A shell may show the marks of healing after unsuccessful attempts at predation, breakage or drillholes from successful predation, abrasion from being dragged by a hermit crab, encrustation by other animals using the shell as a mini-hardground, borings by sponges or clams using the shell as a safe haven, and so on. Battered shells have a history. Perfect shells are beautiful, but lack character. On a more serious note, we paleoecologists leave the encrustations on the shells because we want to know all about ancient communities of living organisms, not just one component. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama