Fossil Snail
A tiny land snail, the Iowa Pleistocene snail, is smaller than a shirt button, at about 5 millimeters (1/4 inch) in diameter. Considered a glacial relict species, it has survived only on these small areas where temperature, moisture and food are suitable. The snail was known only from fossil records and thought to be extinct until 1955, when a scientist discovered it alive in leaf litter in northeast Iowa, eating birch and maple leaves. Because of the fragile nature of the habitat and the small size of the total population, this snail was placed on the federal endangered species list. The primary recovery option for the tiny snail is permanent protection of remaining colonies. Thirty-six known colonies are currently in northeast Iowa with one population occurring in northwest Illinois.
Read more about this topic: Driftless Area National Wildlife Refuge
Famous quotes containing the words fossil and/or snail:
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The snail in his museum
wears his mother all day,
he hides his mysterious bottom
as if it were rotten fruit.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)