The gastropod shell is an animal shell which is part of the body of a gastropod or snail. It is an external skeleton or exoskeleton, which serves not only for muscle attachment, but also for ...

The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum's new exhibit, "Brilliant Colors of the Sea," features photographs of nudibranchs. Nudibranchs are shell-less marine mollusks known for their vibrant colors ...

Snail shells are often colourful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...

Gastropod shell morphologies are famously diverse but generally share a common geometry, the logarithmic coil. Variations on this morphology have been modeled mathematically and computationally but ...

A mollusk discovered just a decade ago called the scaly-foot gastropod doesn’t sound like the toughest of creatures. But researchers have found that its armor could help engineers improve load-bearing ...

There have been few attempts to synthesise the growing body of literature on phenotypic plasticity to reveal patterns and generalities about the extent and magnitude of plastic responses. Here, we ...

Foot-long helmet shells were among rare and protected species found being smuggled out of Sri Lanka as worries grow that demand for perfect shells is leading to a disturbing practice of wresting the ...

If you're collecting sea shells at the beach this summer and wondering what they are, NIWA is here to help. Sea shells are a hard, protective outer layer created by an animal that lives in the sea.