With its specific epithet meaning ‘second-to-none’, the “Matchless Cone” is a gorgeous Caribbean cone greatly celebrated for its beauty and rarity.

One of the ‘Four Famous Rarities’ in S. Peter Dance’s book “Shell Collecting: An Illustrated History”, it was originally described by Linnaeus as a subspecies of Conus ammiralis (L., 1758) with reference to the famous figure by Albertus Seba (1758) drawn from the then unique specimen owned by Johan de la Faille, a famous Dutch collector.

Johan de la Faille ultimately had two specimens, one was sold to the King of Portugal and the other (not the one figured by Seba) later passed to the naturalist Pierre Lyonet (who refused to sell the specimen for £100, equivalent to about US$15000 today, believing it was worth triple of that), then to Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and the same shell supposedly now rests in the Natural History Museum of Geneva. It is now considered a full species with three subspecies: T. c. cedonulli from St Vincent, T. c. dominicanus (Hwass in Bruguiere, 1792) from Grenadines and Grenada, and T. c. insularis (Gmelin, 1791) from St Lucia and Barbados.

It is extremely variable in pattern and colouration (the specimen depicted here is typical of T. c. cedonulli) and somewhat variable in form; and is likely to have been confused with other species especially in the 18th and 19th Century. A predatory gastropod inhabiting sandy to rubbly bottoms around -2~80m deep, its typical shell length is around 45mm but very large specimens may reach 60mm. – Description adapted from Chong Chen

Showing the single result

Show sidebar