Dear Paul, the quote in Poppe & Goto on what they call "Naticarius cruentatus" is an incorrect representation of the taxonomic situation. While it is true that Martyn's 1784 work in principle has been rejected, a few names have been excluded from this action. One such name is "Nerita hebraea Martyn, 1784", found on plate 109 in this work. In 1994 I wrote a brief piece on taxonomical problems in the Naticidae section of Poppe & Goto's "European Seashells" and published this in "The Festivus", the journal of the San Diego Shell Club (The Festivus 26: 23-25). I quote from this paper: "Naticarius cruentatus (Gmelin, 1791) [p. 37, 119, pl. 16, figs. 18-20] is a junior synonym of Naticarius hebraeus (Martyn, 1784), a name which has been declared a nomen conservandum in Opinion 1662/1992 of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) in spite of its publication in a work rejected by ICZN Opinion 457/1957 for not being consistently binomial. Therefore, this species has to be called Naticarius hebraeus (Martyn, 1784). (Poppe & Goto's book was published in 1991, when this information was not yet available)." Regards, Michael -------------------------------------- >>Hi Folks, especially you taxonomy wizzards - >>The following excerpt is from the description of Naticarius cruentatus >>(Gmelin, 1791), in Poppe & Goto's European Seashells, Volume 1: >>"N. hebraeus (Martyn, 1784) is the oldest name for the species, but >>all names given by Martyn - except some for species from New Zealand - >>have been rejected by the International Commission for Zoological >>Nomenclature." >>Question - What did the poor fellow do that prompted the ICZN to >>unilaterally throw out all the species names assigned by him? And, >>what was different about those New Zealand names? >>Regards, >>Paul M. >>Rhode Island ****************************************** Dr. Michael Hollmann Goerdelerweg 17 D-37075 Goettingen GERMANY Tel.: (home) (49)-551-22356 Tel.: (work) (49)-551-3899-437 FAX: (work) (49)-551-3899-644 e-mail: [log in to unmask] ****