Tag: identify

Can You Identify These Broken Seashells? Take the Quiz

My seashell collection sits in a big round platter on my coffee table. I like to search through and find my favorites and sometimes I dig down underneath to find a pretty shell I’d forgotten about. The big clams are used to hold the tinier seashells. Often I need to remind myself of a shell’s name.

The broken and old, worn, shells can sometimes be the most difficult to identify. On this page I share some photos of the broken bits to create a fun little game of “identify me”. Not all shells are in my collection. Some could only be mine as photos.

Can you identify the shell names from my pictures here? They are all different, and one is not a shell. The answers are at the bottom of the page. (Some of the photos also link to a page where the shell can be seen.)

# 1

smooth parts of different sharks eye shells
I think this one might be too easy!

# 2

This black shell gave me some trouble until I noticed the unusual way it swirled – hint: to the left.

black seashell
This is a common shell that has turned black

# 3

The crab is a Giant Red Hermit but can you tell what type of shell he is living in? At first I didn’t know, but there is a little clue.

red crab in seashell
Giant Red Hermit crab in a very broken shell

# 4

Partial seashell pieces of the knobbed whelk

# 5

old, worn fighting conch shell

# 6

These pieces did not all come from the same “shell”. It’s actually not a shell at all.

White pieces of sand dollars

# 7

This big worn shell was one I had to give back. A hermit crab was tucked up inside!

large broken whelk shell

# 8

Broken banded tulip seashell

Here Are The Answers, In Case You Need Them!

How well did you do? I’ve linked to other posts showing better images of these beach treasures.

If you thought this was fun, take another Seashell Quiz by searching online. There are quite a few, which are fun and informative.

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A Pretty Little Seashell

seashell bufonaria perelegans
Bufonaria perelegans
I found the picture of this pretty, little seashell on the free photo sharing site Pixabay. Fortunately the author included the scientific name of the shell so I could search for information on the Bufonaria perelegans.

First I looked in both of my seashell identification books and only found shells that resemble it. It is NOT a Florida shell. This mollusk lives in the Pacific waters near the Philippines and Indonesia. I believe it grows to 3 inches in size.

All the little bumps make this shell interesting. It has a golden caramel yellow color with some white inside. And the fact that it has little spikes assures us it’s not a common nutmeg.

The Frog shell (Bursa rhodostoma) is similar and can be found in Florida. They are of the “family” Bursidae, and if you’d like an idea of how many varieties of shell there can be in this one family, please look at this page at the Natural History Museum Rotterdam. It’s why I can’t respond to readers who say things like, “I have a little yellow shell, do you know what it’s called?” I’m no expert, and I can only suggest getting yourself a good reference book with nice photos. Even then, you may not be able to exactly identify the shell you find.

See more info about this pretty little seashell at Wikipedia.

The Spotted Flamingo Tongue Mollusk

Flamingo Tongue Snail in Profile
Image by laszlo-photo via Flickr

Sometimes a shell, living in the wild, will look very different than when it’s washed up empty on the beach. In the case of the Flamingo Tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum) snail, the coloring belongs to the animal while it’s alive.  The mantle, or fleshy, cape-like covering, is what you are looking at in this picture, and it contains the pretty roundish spots that are yellow-orange, outlined in a darker color.

It is not a large shell, measuring at most about 1.5 inches and you will probably only see one living if you are snorkeling or swimming since they live on sea fans and feed off of coral in shallow ocean water.

Although this looks like a beautiful shell to add to your collection, the shell itself, which is hidden from view by the mantle, is mostly white with a bit of a yellowish tint.  The outstanding characteristic of the shell is the ridge that you can see crossing the center of the shell.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you have found an amazing spotted seashell, if you see this little guy.  Collecting it will kill the animal and the shell will not have spots.  You will both lose.

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