rare shell on dorset beach

[paul monfils]

Anything is possible.  On at least three different occasions people have posted shells on this forum collected in Florida, that turned out to be Indo-Pacific species.  As I recall, one was a Cypraea clandestina, another a Bursa echinata, and I don't recall the other one. I have found a Cypraea caputserpentis and a Babylonia spirata with a hermit crab in it, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  Both these areas are tourist areas with many gift shops that sell baskets of assorted shells (which many tourists probably assume were collected locally), so no great surprise that some youngster may have dropped one on the beach, or simply discarded those in the basket that they didn't care for.  I don't know if the area you mentioned has such tourist shops, but Vexillum plicarium is one of those abundant species likely to turn up in such commercial bulk shell assortments.  <span class="petit">--Last edited by Paul Monfils on 2010-07-28 20:19:24 --</span>