Curator's Blog

Museum, research, and collection updates from Dr. José H. Leal, plus Shell of the Week, which highlights a different species every Friday. Most Shells of the Week—but not all—are found in Southwest Florida.

Dr. José H. Leal serves as the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum’s Science Director and Curator. He received his Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the University of Miami and has served at the Museum since 1996. Under his leadership, the Museum was awarded its first accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in 2010.

José H. Leal

Jul 31, 2020

Striking Open-coiled Snails

The Exquisite False Dial, Spirolaxis centrifuga (Monterosato, 1890) is a delicate and truly attractive species of the sundial snail family Architectonicidae. The species lives in the eastern and western Atlantic Ocean, reaching about 5 mm* in diameter. As the photo above shows, the Exquisite False Dial shell is normally open-coiled, with successive whorls** not touching each other, yet maintaining regular, proportional distances from the adjacent whorls. Other gastropods wit

José H. Leal

Dec 5, 2014

Leal Wentletrap

Leal Wentletrap, Epitonium leali García, 2011, is one of about eight species of Wentletraps (family Epitoniidae) that may be found on the beaches of Sanibel and Captiva. The species may be separated by other Wentletraps by the sculpture irregularly sized shell ribs (most ribs are thin, but some may be three or four times as thick as the thin ones), and microscopic spiral lines between the ribs. The uncommon species, which occurs in Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, was named af

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Curator's Blog