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The periostracum, as well as the coloration, is only rarely preserved in fossil shells. The apertural end of the gastropod shell is the anterior end, nearest to the head of the animal; the apex of the spire is often the posterior end or at least is the dorsal side. Most authors figure the shells with the apex of the spire uppermost.
The central shell clearly shows the selenizone as a series of holes. A selenizone (from the Greek "selene" meaning "moon", and "zone" meaning "girdle") is an anatomical structure that exists in the shells of some families of living sea snails: the slit shells, the little slit shells and the abalone, which are marine gastropod mollusks from ...
Turritellidae, with the common name "tower shells" or "tower snails", is a taxonomic family of small- to medium-sized sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the Sorbeoconcha clade. They are filter feeders ; this method of feeding is somewhat unusual among gastropod mollusks, but is very common in bivalves .
The word "apex" is most often used to mean the tip of the spire of the shell of a gastropod.The apex is the first-formed, and therefore the oldest, part of the shell. [1] To be more precise, the apex would usually be where the tip of the embryonic shell or protoconch is situated, if that is still present in the adult shell (often it is lost or eroded away).
Gastropods typically have a well-defined head with two or four sensory tentacles with eyes, and a ventral foot. The foremost division of the foot is called the propodium. Its function is to push away sediment as the snail crawls. The larval shell of a gastropod is called a protoconch.
shell of Rhodacmea filosa 31 May 2011 - the Wicker ancylid Rhodacmea filosa, (shell pictured) listed as extinct by the IUCN Red List, has been rediscovered. New gastropod taxa described in 2011; 18 April 2011 - Research on the mating of Chelidonura sandrana contradicts the traditional theory about mating in simultaneous hermaphrodites.
The shell of Semicassis pyrum has a large parietal callus, at the top in this image The shell of Cymatium pileare has a narrow parietal callus around the surface of the aperture nearest the columella, on the left of the shell opening as it is shown here. A parietal callus is a feature of the shell anatomy of some groups of snails, i.e. gastropods.
A spire is part of the shell of a snail, a gastropod mollusc, a gastropod shell, and also the whorls of the shell in ammonites, which are fossil shelled cephalopods. In textbook illustrations of gastropod shells, the tradition (with a few exceptions) is to show most shells with the spire uppermost on the page.