A not-so-simple clamshell

[DavidWright2010]

I was walking the beach and noticed this shell. This is the inside, so you're looking at a concave surface. It was different from all the other shells because it had this intricate pattern on the inside surface. So I got out my 'sea life' guide, and I think it is a Green False Tinkle. (What a weird name). I went looking for more, and soon discovered that the main bivalve mollusk on this beach is a 'Butter Clam', and only about 1 in 1000 are this False TInkle. I found about a dozen more over the next few hours, but the first one (this one) was the best.

David

 

[AlanLichty]

Neat beach find

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Cool image, David.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Neat - and a nice image to go with it.

 

[KevinA]

Very interesting David, and a fine shot as well

 

[JimFox]

Hey David,

I sure liked that information and history on this cool looking shell. You did a great job capturing it.

 

[DavidWright2010]

Thanks guys.

A couple of things I didn't mention. First, looking at this picture it seem like there are 3-dimensional structures inside the shell. But in fact the shell is completely smooth and shiny.

Second, this mollusk has asymmetrical shell halves. This picture below shows the bottom half, which the mollusk shapes to match the rock it is sitting on. These two halves were connected until I picked them up and then the tendon between them cracked and they fell apart.

The original JPEG was 5200 by 5200 pixels and 10 megabytes. I guess that was too big to downloaded for display. Here’s a 100% crop to get under 4MB.

David