Cone Shells: Past and Present

“Cones” or "cone shells" are common names for a large group of marine gastropods, whose shell is shaped like a geometric cone. Current sources say that there are between 500 and 800 species of modern cones. Their classification has been in a state of change during the last decade because of new information based on DNA studies of their soft parts.

Cone shells, which can have beautiful color patterns, have been traditionally very popular among shell collectors. If the species is rare, like the one shown below, specimens can be very expensive to purchase. Conus gloriamaris, the so-called "glory of the sea" is a prime example. About 35 years ago, it was considered to be vary rare, hence it was highly priced and worth thousands of dollars. Then many new specimens were found, and the price went way down, to hundreds of dollars.

Conus glorimaris (height 9 cm), West-Pacific region, both shallow and deep-marine depths.

Cones have their greatest diversity in the Western Indo-Pacific region, but a few species have adapted to warm-temperate (coolish) environments, like that found in southern California. Conus californicus is the only cone found today on the west coast of the United States. It is common as beach drift on southern California beaches in Ventura County. This species also has a fossil record in this same area.

Conus californicus (biggest specimen is 3 cm height, Ventura County beach drift, southern California). These shells have been smoothed somewhat by wave action during transport along a beach.

Ancestral cone shells most likely preyed on marine worms because the majority of living cones are vermivorous, that is to say, they  feed on polychaete worms or other worms. During the Miocene (about 15 to 20 million years ago), it is likely that some cones began to hunt for mollusks and fish. This resulted in an explosive adaptive radiation, with an increasing number of cones resorting to these more specialized feeding strategies. Today, there are some cone shells that have retained ancestral feeding habits by preying on worms, but these cones can resort to feeding on mollusks or on fish. One example is Conus tessulatus. It is known to be able to spray venom near the gills of fish, thereby possibly immobilizing them. This technique, however, is not always successful.

Conus tessulatus (4.5 cm height, Seychelles Island, Indian Ocean), a less-derived (in an evolutionary sense) cone. 

Modern cones have developed more effective techniques of delivering venom to their prey. One way, which is used by C. marmoreus (see photos below) is to use a hollow harpoon-shaped tooth that can be injected into a fish. As soon as the fish is paralyzed, the cone "reels" in the fish. Other cones inject extremely toxic venom, and the fish is paralyzed almost immediately.

Conus marmoreus (7.5 cm height) Indo-Pacific region. This a common cone shell, whose shell is thick and heavy. 

Cone toxins are aptly named conotoxins, which are complex cocktails of neurotoxic disulfide-rich peptides. Some of these cone toxins are lethal to humans, thus you should never handle a live cone.

Conus textile (6 cm height, Indo-Pacific region, shallow depth). This is a "deadly" cone, which injects its victims via sharp darts.

Conus geographus (height 9 cm, Indo-Pacific region, shallow water). This cone is well known for its very toxic venom, and some say it is the "number one" most toxic cone. Even predators of mollusks avoid this shell! As a result, the shell of C. geographus is light and thin, unlike nearly all other cone shells.

Cone shells have a fossil record extending back to the Eocene, about 50 million years ago. They had a cosmopolitan (globally widespread) distribution at that time, including occurrences in southern California, southwestern Oregon, and southwestern Washington. Eocene cones are smaller in shell size than most modern cones.

Conus californianus (1.7 cm height, middle Eocene Tejon Formation, southern California). The drill hole in this shell was most likely made by a boring gastropod, belonging to the noticed family.

Conus cowlitzensis (3.6 cm height, late middle Eocene Cowlitz Formation, southwestern Washington). This species is similar morphologically to C. californianus and, together, they likely form a lineage.

Colorful Land Snails

Ancient land snails (air-breathing terrestrial pulmonate gastropods) originated during the Carboniferous Period, probably about 310 million years ago, which was about 165 million years after the first marine gastropods appeared.

More-modern land snails, like those mentioned below, are rare before the Cretaceous but are more plentiful in Cenozoic age (post- 66 million years ago) deposits. As fossils, they are useful to geologists because they are excellent indicators of the terrestrial environment, but their shells are susceptible to having been transported by streams into the marine environment. 

Many modern-day, air-breathing land snails from the tropics have intricate color bands on their shells. Unfortunately, color bands of both terrestrial (and marine shells) are only rarely preserved by fossilization.

The biggest shell is 3.5 cm in height.

Liguus virgineus (Linnaeus, 1758), also called the "rainbow snail" or "candy-stripes snail" air-breathing pulmonate is restricted to the islands of Haiti and Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea. They live in trees, thus they are arboreal. They feed on moss, fungi, an microscopic algae that cover the bark. In recent years, they have been over harvested for shell-craft trade. Also, the destruction of forests have become a major threat. The background color of the shell is creamy white, with narrow bright spiral stripes of red, green, blue, yellow, and purple. The slug-like animal itself is brown with black streaks. Genus Liguus belongs to family Orthalicidae.

Both shells are 3.5 cm in height.

 Amphidromus perversus (Linnaeus, 1758) is another tree snail, but its genus belongs to family Camaenidae. It lives in eastern India to northern Australia and especially in Indonesia (e.g., Sumatra, Java, Bali). The two specimens shown above display the asymmetry in shell coiling, which is common among this species. In fact, some populations simultaneously include the left-hand shell coiling (sinistral) and the right-hand shell coiling (dextral). This is a rare biologic phenomenon, and the reasons for it are still being researched. There is also much color variation among this species and its subspecies.

2.7 cm height

Helicostyla roissyana (Férussac, 1840) is the "chocolate-swirl" snail. It is another air-breathing land snail, but it belongs to family 
Bradybaenidae. This snail is endemic to the Philippines. 

The largest shell is 3.2 cm height.

Helicostyla annulata (Sowerby, 1841) is a tree snail, belonging to family Bradybaenidae. The unbounded  yellow to pale-yellow forms are shown here, but there is also a banded form. Helicostyla annulata is common in the Philippines.

                    

   

Ryssota ovum Valenciennes, 1854 is a tree snail restricted to rain forests in the Philippines. It can also live in branch and leaf debris at the tree base. This species is large sized, and the specimen shown here is 7 cm in diameter. The common name of this snail is the "Polished Muffin Snail." Some people consider the meat of this snail to be a delicacy, and its shell is used as a water vessel. The genus belongs to family Helicarionidae.

Faults

In the previous post, I discussed folds, which precede faults. That is to say, if the forces that create a fold becomes too strong, the rock layers (beds) eventually fracture, rather than just bend. The dictum is: FOLDING PRECEDES FAULTING. 

Horizontal layers prior to being deformed. The geologically youngest layer is at the top.

Children's clay makes useful fault models, as shown here. The blue layer (bed) is the oldest, and the green layer is the youngest.

In the following images, I shall discuss the different kinds of faults. Afterward, I shall show examples of some of the faults common to southern California.

DIFFERENT KINDS OF FAULTS:

A reverse fault forms when compression causes localized bending and subsequent breakage. The compression causes the "hanging-wall" block on the right side to move up relative to the "foot-wall" block on the left side. The compression causes the layers (beds) to overlap. The fault in this scenario is a high-angle reverse fault. The terms "foot-wall" and "hanging wall" stem from the early days when a miner would dig a mine shaft down along a fault plane (minerals commonly form in this zone of breakage because that is where fluids would easily flow). The miner's feet would be on the "footwall," and the "hanging wall" would be above his head.

If, however, the angle of the reverse fault is low, then the fault is referred to as a thrust fault. The relative motions of the hanging and footwalls are the same as for a high-angle reverse fault.

A normal fault forms when extension (= the opposite of compression) caused the "hanging-wall" block on the right side to move down relative to the "foot-wall" block on the right side. The layers do not overlap themselves. The fault in this scenario is a high-angle normal fault. These kind of faults are uncommon in southern California because this area has mostly undergone (and still is undergoing) compression, rather than extension.

A strike-slip fault has mostly horizontal displacement (shown by the arrows in the diagram above). The sense of displacement is that one side moves in one direction, and the other moves in the opposite direction or is stationary. The San Andreas Fault is an excellent example of a strike-slip fault.

In southern California, all faults, except normal faults, are  common because the area has been and is still undergoing compression. 

EXAMPLES OF FAULTS:

In this reverse fault (the red line), the "OLDER FORMATION (A)," consisting of layers (beds) has been displaced, and is now situated above the "YOUNGER FORMATION (B)." This is not the way things were originally, because, in unfaulted situations, older beds are below younger beds (as is the case on the far left side of the image).

In this thrust fault (red line), older brown sandstone and gray mudstone rocks, in the "shadowy" upper right-hand side of the image, have been moved sideways at a low angle (nearly horizontal) and now overlie younger conglomerate (reddish sandstone and small boulder) beds. Prior to the faulting, the brownish and gray beds had a gradational contact with the underlying reddish beds. Now, they have a fault contact with the underlying reddish beds. The two rock units belong to different formations of considerably different geologic age and much different ancient environments of deposition. Low-angle thrust faults like this one can be very difficult to detect unless the geologist knows full well the lithologic (rock types) and their vertical changes within a formation or a sequence of formations.

The vertical cliff in the image shown above is at least 50 feet high. This fault (indicated by the red arrow) is along the sharp line of color difference between the white rock, which is an igneous rock that formed several hundred million years ago, and the dark gray rock, which formed about 2 billion years ago. This fault is a strike-slip fault and originally involved sideways motion of one rock mass sliding pass the other. 

This is a closeup along the fault shown in the previous image. One can truly put a finger on the fault.

This is a vertical strike-slip fault.  The grayish rocks left of the red-and-white measuring stick (1.5 m in length) are geologically old "basement" metamorphic rocks, and the red rocks on the right of the staff are much younger sedimentary rocks consisting of sandstone and siltstone.

Folds

Folds occur when sedimentary beds (layers) of rock are compressed by tectonic forces. When compressed roughly equally on both sides, the beds can form a syncline (U or V shaped) and/or an anticline (arch shaped). All of the following images are cross-sectional views of beds.

This is a wide, gently deformed syncline.

These are narrow, moderately compressed anticline and associated syncline folds. At the top of this cliff, the folds become less symmetrical and "migrate"sideways. In addition, other folds can develop: notice the addition of another anticline on the upper left side of the image.

This is an overturned fold, which means that the compression was asymmetric (stronger on one side versus the other), which resulted in an asymmetric (partly "flopped over") anticline. The red dashed lines in the image above indicate where beds were present before removal by means of erosion.


These very compressed beds occur in core area of the previously mentioned overturned fold. Notice that beds in the center of this image are initially vertical, become horizontal, and go back to being vertical again. This is a rare sight for field geologists. 



This is a very small (about 10 feet in height) "kink fold," in the immediate area of the where the previous image was taken. These small "kink folds" have the same overall pattern (except in miniature) as the large overturned fold in the area.

This image was taken about 1.5 miles northward of where the previous images of the overturned fold were taken. The thin beds in the core show strong convolutions.



Farther to the north, "spaghetti" bedding occurs in the core of the overturned fold. This type of intensely deformed bedding occurs when the relatively "soft" mudstone beds "flow" like tooth-paste because of intense pressure.

This image shows a cross-section of a smaller overturned fold. There is also a small reverse fault (this kind of fault will be discussed in my next post), indicated by the red arrow. The angulation (= an angular unconformity) between the white bed and the underlying cavernous brownish bed, both in the lower left-hand corner of the image, was caused by channelized erosion of the brownish bed before the white bed was deposited.

Amber and entombed insects

Amber is fossilized resin that blocks gaps in tree bark, especially conifers. It is not the same as sap, which transports nutrients through the heartwood of trees. Amber is very sticky and insects can be trapped in it when they try to burrow or eat the bark. When a tree limb is injured, amber can exude as blobs or drippings and flow down the side of the trunk. Insects can easily be engulfed or trapped in the resin, which commonly falls onto the ground and becomes incorporated into the soil. Other small animals, like lizards, frogs, birds, and even bats have been found in amber. Only a few tree resins (e.g., Kauri pine in New Zealand) can form fossilizable amber. Hardened resin is called copal, and it is easily transportable in streams and rivers, where is becomes part of the non-marine sedimentary record. In some cases, it can be transported into the nearshore-marine environment.

A polished specimen of copal (6 cm width);
 where collected unknown.

The transparency and color of the specimen shown above are typical for most amber. Bubbles, which are also commonly present, make amber lightweight and, in some cases, even floatable in water.

 

Left image: leaf (1 cm long) in specimen of copal shown above.

Right image: bug (7 mm, maximum length) in specimen of copal shown above; with wings and legs intact. 

Left image: Another polished chunk of copal (8 cm length, notice thumbnail--for scale--on left side of image); where collected unknown. Enlarged image shows a termite? (4 mm length) and below that, another insect, both found in the chunk.

These two pebbles, both polished, shown the typical range of color (hue) of most copal. The smallest piece is 1.5 cm in height. Both are from the Baltic Sea area, Denmark. No insects are present in these two specimens, which shows that not all copal has to have insects.

Copal is used in making jewelry and also in rosary beads. Copal is relatively soft, however, and can be scratched by a hard surface. When buying copal, the more insects (inclusions) present means that the price goes up. A word of caution: so-called "copal" can be made out of look-alike plastic.

The oldest known copal  is Late Paleozoic (Late Carboniferous, Pennsylvanian-age coal beds). The oldest copal with insects is Early Cretaceous (when the first flowering plants appeared).

Hyolithus: a Cambrian mystery solved

Preliminary comments: The fossil Hyolithus has long been an enigma. Is it a mollusk, a worm, or what? When I first started teaching, it was strongly favored to be an early mollusk. It remained in that uncertain mode until recently when a team of paleontologists (Moysiuk et al., 2017) collected over 1,500 specimens from British Columbia. Remarkable specimens were found that show, for the first time, soft-part anatomy impression. Now the mystery is solved. Read on to found out what the answer is.

Impression of a fossil specimen of the hyolithid Hyolithus cecrops Walcott, 1917 (19 mm height, early middle Cambrian, northwestern Montana). Found with specimens of trilobites [Albertella helena], brachiopods, and trace fossils.

Hyolithids are a group of small, somewhat flat-shaped, shells whose biologic affinities have long been uncertain. The most common assumption was that they were gastropods, which had a planktonic (floating) existence, like the pteropod gastropods (so-called "sea butterflies") found in modern seas. Their most perplexing morphologic feature were the two "oars," which are now named "helens." In the image shown above, only the left helen is preserved.

Most of the several hundred species belong to genus Hyolithus, which had a worldwide distribution, starting in Early Cambrian time. They became diminished during Ordovician and lingered thereafter until the Middle Permian.

Dorsal view of exterior of H. cecrops showing the major morphologic characters.  

Side view of exterior of H. cecrops. The operculum (lid) could open slightly, and the feeding apparatus (probably similar to the lophophore of some modern animals), could then be extended into the water column. The helens were used as stilts/props for holding the animal above the muddy bottom substrate. 

Dorsal view of interior of H. cecrops, showing critically important soft-tissue impressions: the presumed lophophore, the location of the mouth, and the U-shaped gut. These impression are indicative that hyolithids were not planktonic mollusks. Instead, they were benthonic (bottom dwellers) animals that had their closest relatives being the lophophore-bearing brachiopods and bryozoans. 

For more information see:
Moysiuk, J. et al. 2017. Nature v. 54:394–397 (like other pay-for- subscription journals, the abstract is free, but it costs to read or download the actual paper).

Tektite, an interesting rock

Tektites (pronounced tek-tites) are the by-products of meteorite impacts on Earth.  Composed of gravel-sized, natural glass particles, which are predominantly black, they can also be brown, gray, or green. They made up of natural glass formed from molten terrestrial debris thrown into the air after a meteor strikes the ground. Tektites have no crystalline structure because they cool so rapidly, thus crystals cannot grow. In that sense, they are similar to obsidian (volcanic glass), but tektites have lower water content than obsidian glass.

A tektite (4 cm length) from Guang Dong, Kwangtung Province, China.

Tektites occur within “strewn-fields” associated with meterorite impact craters. Some of the more famous “strewn-fields” are in southern China, the Czech Republic, and the Ivory Coast of Africa (Ghana).

If you check online, you can find tektites for sale, at a modest price in most cases. For more information about tektites, see <www.britannica.com>