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Casis bibex
Recently, Mrs. Kathleen Mateott of Dromana (Victoria) sent me for examination an albinistic cowrie. It was trawled by a
prawner from Mooloolaba, in about 100 fathoms in the same area. The empty shell (the anterior extremity of which has been
injured, but healed during the animal's life) is 31.4 mm long, breadth 54%, with 26 labial and 21 columellar teeth and 9
denticles on the inner margin of the rather broad though shallow fossula. The right margin is regularly pitted. The shell is
subpellucid, white, unspotted, but shows traces of at least five pale fulvous lateral dots on each margin (which are too pale
to be visible on the photograph). The oblong shell recalls a smooth Staphylaea limacina, but the unquestionable presence of
fulvous lateral spots excludes such a determination. Therefore, I think this unique shell to be a deep water albino of
Erosaria tomlini though its teeth are more numerous than in usual tomlini collected on the shores. This determination,
however, needs confirmation by examination of further specimens which I hope will be discovered by future trawling: but I do
not think that Mrs. Matcott's shell may belong to a species new to science. A dilated albinistic tomlini from Tonga has been
figured by Cernohorsky in H.S.N. 1966, no. 82, p. 3).
It is a curious fact that Erosaria tomlini is a bizonal species like the other deep water species mentioned above (see the
map in H.S.N. 1964, no. 52, p. 3): it lives in Melanesia and East Australia (E. tomlini, = prodiga, = percomis) and in a
northern zone from Japan to Philippines (E. tomlini ogasawarensis, = maturata, = marielae), but it is absent in the
equatorial zone of the Pacific.
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casis bibex
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