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NUMBER: 20240528
SPECIES: Milk Conch, Macrostrombus costatus (Gmelin, 1791)
COLLECTION: 1 shell, photographed, and returned to the flower bed in the park. EHW now realizes this specimen is important and should be deposited in an international museum. EHW was reluctant to remove the specimen from a park. This was a mistake.
REQUEST: If anyone finds this shell, please send it to EHW at the address below. He will deposit it in a museum.
DATE: 28 May 2024
LOCALITY: Amber Cove, San felipe de Puerto Plata
LATITUDE, LONGITUDE: 19.8303, -70.7750
KNOWN LENGTH: Average 20 cm, max 23.1 (9.1 in)(???). Our specimen was broken, worn, and eroded, but we extrapolated the length to be 25.98 cm (10.23 in) long. This represents the longest Milk Conch specimen ever recorded.
SIMILAR SPECIES: EHW originally, and too quickly, assumed the specimen was a King Helminth Conch, Cassis tuberosa (Linnaeus, 1758), which would not have been that remarkable as they have a known maximum length of 30.1 cm (11.8 in).
AGE: The first inhabitants of the Dominican Republic were Taino-Arawak Caribbean Archaic people from Central and northern South America 6,000 years ago (ya). These hunter-gathers had a knowledge of Milk Conch and would have overharvested the large, delicious, and easily available, shallow-water mollusk in a few hundred years, reducing the local size forever. Thus our shell is from what we can call the pristine giant-conch period. Conch meat then and today is removed from the shell by making a hole through which to cut the adductor muscle (Fig. 2). Thus our specimen was harvested by Taino-Arawak people ~5,700 ya. The broken, worn, and badly eroded shell also suggests an ancient age.
OBSERVERS: Dr. Ernest H. Williams, Jr.[2,3,5,6] and Dr. Lucy Bunkley-Williams[2,4,5,7]
REFERENCES:
<>Williams, H., Jr. and L. Bunkley-Williams. 2024. The oldest chronologically and historically, and largest Milk Conch, Macrostrombus costatus (Gmelin), shell on Earth. iNaturalist #???, 9 June 2024. [954] ResearchGate.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]Identification was peer-reviewed, text edited and sometimes condensed. The original text is in our reprint 954 and ResearchGate. [2]Extraordinary Professors, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University, South Africa; Adjunct Professors, Research Field Station, Florida Gulf Coast University, 5164 Bonita Beach Road, Bonita Springs, FL 34134; [3]Dept. Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico (retired); [4]Dept. Biology, UPR (retired); [5]920 St. Andrews Blvd, Naples, FL 34113-8943; [6]e-mail ermest.williams1@upr.edu; ORCID 0000-0003-0913-3013; [7]e-mail lucy.williams1@upr.edu, ORCID 0000-0003-1390-911x
Figure 1. The longest Milk Conch ever recorded.
Figure 2. Milk Conch shell upper hole for cutting adductor muscle. Lower hole from destruction of spire.