Pterynotus elongatus (Lightfoot, 1786) MURICIDAE In tangle net by local fisherman, Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippines, 72.8mm, F+/F++, early 2014 The Club Murex is an elegantly and curiously shaped muricid distributed very widely across the entire Indo-West Pacific region ranging from eastern Africa to Hawaii, USA including the Red Sea and best known from the Philippines. Although a common species today, it was historically a famous rarity and is one of S. Peter Dances 50 Rare Shells (1969). Since around 1767 when it first appeared in the western world it has been very rare; until mid to late 1900s when divers from the Philippines and other countries began to recover it in good quantities. A carnivorous gastropod inhabiting rocky to sandy bottoms of around -5~150m deep, it was rare despite the relatively shallow depths of -10~40m where it is most often found partly because live specimens are well concealed by marine overgrowth. Often found on hard corals with complex structures, making it even more difficult to locate. Both scientific and vernacular name refers to its spire which is usually slender-looking due to the fragile varices are damaged on the earlier whorls. Uncommonly specimens with intact varices on earlier whorls are found and these are truly wonderous. Majority of specimens are pure white in colouration but the colouration is actually variable from white to yellow to orange to brown and even violet. Typical shell length around 70mm, extremely large specimens are known to exceed 100mm.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 13:41:17 +0000
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