Cypraeoidea
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| Cypraeoidea | ||||||||||||||||||
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 Cypraea chinensis with mantle fully extended
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The Cypraeacea as named by Rafinesque in 1815, but now the Cypraeoidea, cowries and cowry allies, is a superfamily of sea snails, marine gastropods included in the suborder Hypsogastropoda.
This superfamily contains the families Cypraeidae and Ovulidae.
[edit] Shell description
These two families have adult shells which do not look like typical gastropod shells, they are often smooth and rounded in shape, whether globular or elongate.
The shells of almost every species in this superfamily are very smooth and shiny, and this is because in the living animal, the shell is nearly always fully covered with the mantle.
Usually no spire is visible in the fully adult shell, and there is a long, very narrow, aperture.
The snails in these families have no [[Operculum (gastropod) |operculum]].
[edit] Nomenclature
Superfamilies for the past century and more, especiallly for invertebrates, prior to the recent ruling by the ICZN, ended in --acea, or --aceae, as with the Cyroaeacea and Strombacea, not --oidea as now required according the article 29.2. Oidea as a suffex was reserved (almost) exclusively for subclasses and superorders where it is stll found. Gastropod superfamilies are found typically as --acea in the literature as originally named. (Keen 1958, Moore et al 1952, Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology)
[edit] References
Keen, A.Myra 1958; Sea Shells of Tropical West America, Stanford University Press.
Moore, Lalicker, and Fischer 1952; Invertebrate Fossils, McGraw-Hill Book.
Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology; part K (Nautiloidea) 1964 and part L (Ammonoidea) 1962; Geological Society of America and Univ. of Kansas Press
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