Parts of The Shell
The terminology used to describe the shells of gastropods includes:
- Aperture: the opening of the shell
- Lip = peristome: the margin of the aperture
- Apex: the smallest few whorls of the shell
- Body whorl: the largest whorl in which the main part of the visceral mass of the mollusk is found
- Columella: the "little column" at the axis of revolution of the shell
- Operculum: the "trapdoor" of the shell
- Parietal callus: a ridge on the inner lip of the aperture in certain gastropods
- Periostracum: a thin layer of organic "skin" which forms the outer layer of the shell of many species
- Peristome: the part of the shell that is right around the aperture
- Plait: folds on the columella.
- Protoconch: the nuclear whorls; the larval shell, often remains in position even on an adult shell
- Sculpture: ornamentation on the outer surface of a shell
- Lira: one kind of shell sculpture
- Siphonal canal: an extension of the aperture in certain gastropods
- Spire: the part of the shell above the body whorl.
- Suture: The junction between whorls of most gastropods
- Teleoconch : the entire shell without the protoconch; the postnuclear whorls.
- Umbilicus: in shells where the whorls move apart as they grow, on the underside of the shell there is a deep depression reaching up towards the spire; this is the umbilicus
- Varix: on some mollusk shells, spaced raised and thickened vertical ribs mark the end of a period of rapid growth; these are varices
- Whorl: each one of the complete rotations of the shell spiral
Read more about this topic: Gastropod Shell
Famous quotes containing the words parts of the, parts of, parts and/or shell:
“The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 18:8.
“The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.”
—Frances Trollope (1780–1863)
“Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
—Isaac Newton (1642–1727)