Home Animals & Birds Fascinating Shells: An Introduction to 121 of the World's Most Wonderful Mollusks

Fascinating Shells: An Introduction to 121 of the World's Most Wonderful Mollusks

by Salvador, Andreia

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Book Overview A New Scientist Best Book of the Year Beautiful photographs of stunning shells from London's Natural History Museum, home to one of the ...
A New Scientist Best Book of the Year

Beautiful photographs of stunning shells from London's Natural History Museum, home to one of the most significant and comprehensive collections in the world.

Collected and treasured for their beauty, used in religious rituals, or even traded as currency, shells have fascinated humans for millennia. Ancient and enchanting, dazzling in form and variety, these beautiful objects come from mollusks, one of the most diverse groups in the animal kingdom, including snails, oysters, cuttlefish, and chitons. Soft-bodied, these creatures rely on shells for protection from enemies and their environments, from snowy mountains to arid deserts, in deep-sea hydrothermal vents and the jungles of the tropics, on rocky shores, and in coral reefs.

In this book, mollusk expert Andreia Salvador profiles some of the world's most beautiful and quirky shells, each selected from the more than eight million specimens held in the collection at London's Natural History Museum. We lock eyes with the hundred-eyed cowry, named after "the all-seeing one," the giant Argus Panoptes of Greek mythology. We see how shells' appearances translate into defense strategies, as with the zigzag nerite, which varies its patterning to deceive and confuse predators. And we meet shell inhabitants, such as the amber snail, which eats earthworms by sucking them up like spaghetti. Reproduced in full color and striking detail, these shells have much to reveal about the history of collecting, the science of taxonomy, and the human desire to understand the natural world.

Book Details Format: Hardcover | Pages: 256 | Language: English | Publisher: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR | ISBN: 0226819132
FormatHardcover
Pages256
LanguageEnglish
ISBN0226819132
EAN9780226819136
PublisherUNIV OF CHICAGO PR
Publication Date1970-01-01
EditionFirst Edition
AccessoriesNo Accessory
ConditionNew
Product TypeHARD COVER BOOKS
Weight1.5 Pounds
Length7.1 Inches
Width6.2 Inches
Height1.0 Inches
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