A Hermit Crab with Good Taste

Just ran across this cool photo of a hermit crab that had made a home in a fossil Chicoreus shell in Curacao. It’s from Barry B. Brown’s Coral Reef Photos blog. I’m assuming it is probably a specimen of Chicoreus (s.s.) brevifrons. I have many fossil muricids in my collection that show evidence of ancient hermit crab habitation, indicating that crabs have had excellent taste in personal shell collecting for a very long time! 🙂

Here’s some more info on the fossil shells of Curacao from the same blog.

 

Yesterday and Today – Chicoreus (Phyllonotus)

I started out collecting only fossil shells, and only later began to collect a limited number of Recent species. One reason is that collecting Recent shells, particularly in a family as large as the Muricidae, is quite expensive. Another reason is because I just don’t like the thought of killing creatures simply to put their shells on display on a shelf. Thus, I tend to limit my Recent shell collection to species that are also found in the fossil record.

This post begins what I hope to be an ongoing series comparing fossil and Recent specimens of the same muricid species. I have not sought to display my best specimens of each species, but rather have simply selected specimens that are similar in size and condition whenever possible (while recognizing that a fossil shell will never be in as good a condition as its modern parallel). In the absence of Recent specimens from which to determine what color patterns a fossil species possessed in real life, it is necessary to bleach the fossils and expose them to ultraviolet light — a technique I am currently not equipped to carry out, let alone to photograph.