A truly unique cypraeid species, the “Fulton’s Cowrie” is one of the most famed and desirable cowries of all. Today its known range is from Mozambique to East London, South Africa, with a slight disjunction between the two countries where there are virtually no records.

First discovered from the digestive tract of fishes (termed “ex pisce”, mostly from the “Black Musselcracker” Cymatoceps nasutus (Castelnau, 1861)) in Natal, South Africa, and for years this remained the only way of obtaining this species. Only after 1987 live and fresh-dead specimens have began to surface through deep-diving and dredging in eastern South Africa, although these remained extremely rare.

More recently, Russian trawlers hit the ‘jackpot’ when they discovered a large number of this species off Mozambique, causing the market price to drop significantly around the 1990s. Although sharing the general characteristics with the South African ones, individuals from Mozambique were larger, more inflated, and had more numerous teeth.

Specimens vary greatly in form, and rarely an individual may be found with callous so extensive that the shell appears triangular from dorsal view. This triangular form of the Mozambique population was the first subspecies to be formally named, as A. fultoni amorimi (Raybaudi, 1989). The more common, inflated and globular specimens found in Mozambique was later designated the subspecies name A. fultoni massieri (Lorenz, 1991), but this was later synonymised with A. fultoni amorimi and is no longer valid. The two subspecies recognised today are therefore segregated geographically: all specimens from South Africa are A. fultoni fultoni and all specimens from Mozambique are A. fultoni amorimi.

Another key difference between fultoni amorimi and fultoni fultoni is that the surface of fultoni amorimi is usually naturally covered with fine granules, causing the surface to appear slightly dull (poor or dead specimens are often polished and sold as GEM); the surface of fultoni fultoni appears naturally polished.

As the triangular form is much rarer and costly dealers have come up with the form name ‘triangularis’ when describing superbly calloused amorimi and ‘mozambicana’ for inflated, normal specimens; but many dealers and collectors today still use the name amorimi for triangular specimens and massieri for globular specimens. As for the South African nominal subspecies, the form name “miniatra” is often used to describe remarkably small specimens (usually around 50mm or less in shell length).

One of the 50 “Rare Shells” selected by S. Peter Dance (1969), trawl supplies from Mozambique has become scarce nowadays and thus this species has become very rare again, especially with its ever-increasing popularity and demand among the collecting world. The subspecies amorimi is rare, whereas amorimi f. ‘triangularis’ is extremely rare; fultoni fultoni and fultoni f. ‘miniatra’ are rare in dead collected state and extremely rare as always in live-collected condition.

In addition to the variations in shell form mentioned above (very variable within each population too), the spotting of the sides and the base are also highly variable. The mesmerising pattern on the dorsum is yet another extremely variable factor with those forming a cross-like pattern, known as the “Malteese Cross”, most highly prized among collectors.

A carnivorous grazer feeding exclusively on sponges, it inhabits moderately deep waters around -60~150m. Typical shell length around 60mm for South African specimens and 70mm for Mozambican specimens, extremely large specimens are known to exceed 80mm.

For a long time it was placed in the genus Barycypraea, but very recently Barycypraea was deemed to be a fossil-only genus containing only the type species Barycypraea caputviperae (Martin, 1899)†, and a new genus Afrozoila was erected to house it. It is considered to be a relict species and one of the last surviving members of Bernayinae, a very old lineage within Cypraeidae that flourished during the Pliocene. The name fultoni was given in honour of the British dealer Hugh C. Fulton, amorimi in honour of the Portuguese dealer Manuel Amorim, and massieri in honour of the South African dealer Werner Massier. – from Chong Chen’s post