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Staffordia Staffordi
''Staffordia staffordi'' is a species of air-breathing land snail, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Staffordiidae. The specific name ''staffordi'' as well as generic name ''Staffordia'' is in honor of Brigadier-General Stafford, who was in command of the punitive force which entered the Dafla Hills for the first time in the winter of 1874-1875. Distribution The type locality of this species is Toruputu Peak, Dafla Hills, , in India. Description The shell is moderately solid, with a thick epidermis, very globosely conoid, rounded below. The umbilicus almost hidden. The sculpture is small. Elongate papillae arearranged longitudinally, and differing from all the other species collected in the Dafla Hills. The color is olivaceous ochre. The spire is low. The suture is shallow. The shell has 5 whorls with sides convex above, rather flattened on the periphery of the last whorl. The aperture is lunate, narrow, subvertical, milky white within, rounded below. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gastropod Shell
The gastropod shell is part of the body of a Gastropoda, gastropod or snail, a kind of mollusc. The shell is an exoskeleton, which protects from predators, mechanical damage, and dehydration, but also serves for muscle attachment and calcium storage. Some gastropods appear shell-less (slugs) but may have a remnant within the mantle, or in some cases the shell is reduced such that the body cannot be retracted within it (semi-slug). Some snails also possess an operculum that seals the opening of the shell, known as the Aperture (mollusc), aperture, which provides further protection. The study of mollusc shells is known as conchology. The biological study of gastropods, and other molluscs in general, is malacology. Shell morphology terms vary by species group. Shell layers The gastropod shell has three major layers secreted by the Mantle (mollusc), mantle. The calcareous central layer, tracum, is typically made of calcium carbonate precipitated into an organic matrix known as c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aperture (mollusc)
The aperture is an opening in certain kinds of mollusc shells: it is the main opening of the shell, where the head-foot part of the body of the animal emerges for locomotion, feeding, etc. The term ''aperture'' is used for the main opening in gastropod shells, scaphopod shells, and also for ''Nautilus'' and ammonite shells. The word is not used to describe bivalve shells, where a natural opening between the two shell valves in the closed position is usually called a ''gape''. Scaphopod shells are tubular, and thus they have two openings: a main anterior aperture and a smaller posterior aperture. As well as the aperture, some gastropod shells have additional openings in their shells for respiration; this is the case in some Fissurellidae (keyhole limpets) where the central smaller opening at the apex of the shell is called an orifice, and in the Haliotidae (abalones) where the row of respiratory openings in the shell are also called orifices. In gastropods In some prosobranch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Last Whorl
The body whorl is part of the morphology of the shell in those gastropod mollusks that possess a coiled shell. The term is also sometimes used in a similar way to describe the shell of a cephalopod mollusk. In gastropods In gastropods, the body whorl, or last whorl, is the most recently formed and largest whorl (or revolution) of a spiral or helical shell, terminating in the aperture. It is called the "body whorl" because most of the body of the soft parts of the animal fits into this whorl. The proportional size of the body whorl in gastropod shells differs greatly according to the actual shell morphology. For shells in which the rate of whorl expansion of each revolution around the axis is very high, the aperture and the body whorl are large, and the shell tends to be low spired. The shell of the abalone is a good example of this kind of shell. The opposite tendency can sometimes create a high spire with very little whorl increase per revolution. In these instances, e.g. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whorl (mollusc)
A whorl is a single, complete 360° revolution or turn in the spiral growth of a mollusc shell. A spiral configuration of the shell is found in numerous gastropods, but it is also found in shelled cephalopods including ''Nautilus'', ''Spirula'' and the large extinct subclass of cephalopods known as the ammonites. A spiral shell can be visualized as consisting of a long conical tube, the growth of which is coiled into an overall helical or planispiral shape, for reasons of both strength and compactness. The number of whorls which exist in an adult shell of a particular species depends on mathematical factors in the geometric growth, as described in D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's classic 1917 book ''On Growth and Form'', and by David Raup. The main factor is how rapidly the conical tube expands (or flares-out) over time. When the rate of expansion is low, such that each subsequent whorl is not that much wider than the previous one, then the adult shell has numerous whorls. When the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suture (gastropod)
In anatomy, a suture is a fairly rigid joint between two or more hard elements of an organism, with or without significant overlap of the elements. Sutures are found in the skeletons or exoskeletons of a wide range of animals, in both invertebrates and vertebrates. Sutures are found in animals with hard parts from the Cambrian period to the present day. Sutures were and are formed by several different methods, and they exist between hard parts that are made from several different materials. Vertebrate skeletons The skeletons of vertebrate animals (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) are made of bone, in which the main rigid ingredient is calcium phosphate. Cranial sutures The skulls of most vertebrates consist of sets of bony plates held together by cranial sutures. These sutures are held together mainly by Sharpey's fibers which grow from each bone into the adjoining one. Sutures in the ankles of land vertebrates In the type of crurotarsal ankle which is found i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spire (mollusc)
A spire is a part of the coiled shell of molluscs. The spire consists of all of the whorls except for the body whorl. Each spire whorl represents a rotation of 360°. 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. The spire, when it is not damaged or eroded, includes the protoconch (also called the nuclear whorls or the larval shell), and most of the subsequent teleoconch whorls (also called the postnuclear whorls), which gradually increase in area as they are formed. Thus the spire in most gastropods is pointed, the tip being known as the "apex". The word "spire" is used, in an analogy to a church spire or rock spire, a high, thin, pinnacle. The "spire angle" is the angle, as seen from the apex, at which a spire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture (mollusc)
Sculpture is a feature of many of the shells of mollusks. It is three-dimensional ornamentation on the outer surface of the shell, as distinct from either the basic shape of the shell itself or the pattern of colouration, if any. Sculpture is a feature found in the shells of gastropods, bivalves, and scaphopods. The word "sculpture" is also applied to surface features of the aptychus of ammonites, and to the outer surface of some calcareous opercula of marine gastropods such as some species in the family Trochidae. Sculpture can be concave or convex, incised into the surface or raised from it. Sometimes the sculpture has microscopic detailing. The term "sculpture" refers only to the calcareous outer layer of shell, and does not include the proteinaceous periostracum, which is in some cases textured even when the underlying shell surface is smooth. In many taxa, there is no sculpture on the shell surface at all, apart from the presence of fine growth lines. The sculpture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umbilicus (mollusc)
The umbilicus of a shell is the axially aligned, hollow cone-shaped space within the whorls of a coiled mollusc shell. The term umbilicus is often used in descriptions of gastropod shells, i.e. it is a feature present on the ventral (or under) side of many (but not all) snail shells, including some species of sea snails, land snails, and freshwater snails. The word is also applied to the depressed central area on the planispiral coiled shells of ''Nautilus'' species and fossil ammonites. (These are not gastropods, but shelled cephalopods.) In gastropods The spirally coiled whorls of gastropod shells frequently connect to each other by their inner sides, during the natural course of its formation. This results in a more or less solid central axial pillar, known as the columella. The more intimate the contact between the concave side of the whorls is, the more solid the columella becomes. On the other hand, if this connection is less intense, a hollow space inside the whorls may re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Non-marine Molluscs Of India
The non-marine molluscs of India are a part of the molluscan fauna of India. There are 5070 species of marine and non-marine molluscs living in the wild in India. There are 3371 species of marine molluscs in India.Aravind N. A., Rajshekhar K. P. & Madhaystha N. A''Patterns of Land Snail Distribution in the Western Ghats'' last change 10 October 2006, accessed 1 March 2009. There are 1671 species of non-marine molluscs living in the wild in India. This includes 1488 terrestrial species in 140 genera and 183 freshwater species in 53 genera. There are a total of species of gastropods, which breaks down to ?? species of freshwater gastropods, and 1488 species of land gastropods, plus ?? species of bivalves living in the wild. ;Summary table of number of species Freshwater gastropods Neritidae * '' Neripteron auriculatum'' (Lamarck, 1816)'' * '' Neripteron violaceum'' (Gmelin, 1791) * '' Neritina pulligera'' (Linnaeus, 1767)(file created 29 July 2010FRESH WATER MOLLUSCAN SP ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dafla Hills
Daphla (or ''Dafla'') Hills is a tract of hilly country on the border of western Arunachal and Assam occupied by an independent tribe called Daphla. It lies to the north of the Tezpur and North Lakhimpur subdivisions, and is bounded on the west by the Aka Hills Arunachal Pradesh (, ) is a state in Northeastern India. It was formed from the erstwhile North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) region, and became a state on 20 February 1987. It borders the states of Assam and Nagaland to the south. It shares int ... and on the east by the Abor Range. In 1872 a party of independent Daphlas suddenly attacked a colony of their own tribesmen, who had settled at Amtola in British territory, and carried away forty-four captives to the hills. This led to the Daphla expedition of 1874, when a force of 1,000 troops released the prisoners and reduced the tribe to submission. See also * 1953 Achingmori incident References Hills of Assam {{assam-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen FRS FZS FRGS MBOU (6 July 1834 – 2 December 1923), known until 1854 as Henry Haversham Austen, was an English topographer, surveyor, naturalist and geologist. He explored the mountains in the Himalayas and surveyed the glaciers at the base of K2, also known as Mount Godwin-Austen. Geographer Kenneth Mason called Godwin-Austen "probably the greatest mountaineer of his day". He also remains the most important investigator of the terrestrial molluscs of the Indian subcontinent. Early life The eldest son of the geologist Robert Austen, who in 1854 added Godwin to his surname by royal licence, Henry Haversham Austen was probably born at Ogwell House, near Newton Abbot, Devon, where his father had recently taken up residence. His father's family, landowners in Cheshire and Surrey since the 12th century, was a family of merchant venturers, soldiers, scholars, and collectors. His grandfather, Sir Henry Edmund Austen (1785– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
