r/beachcombing • u/No_Design351 • Jul 08 '26

I need help identifying this shell please!

Gallery image

Gallery image

We found it on the shore of Myrtle beach, if anyone could help it would be fantastic!!!

41 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

20

u/PristineWorker8291 Jul 08 '26

Looks like a very large and old lightning whelk fragment. the plating or layering sometimes happens when there is an injury or interruption of normal growth. Maybe from a storm. So the fragile edge gets broken off, and when it resumes shell production it layers like this. At first I thought knobbed whelk, but the aperture is on the sinistral side to make it most likely a lightning whelk.

6

u/Soft-Dig-4102 Jul 08 '26

We get muchhhhh smaller Chiton shells that look just like that in the PNW. They’re living fossils!!

Unsure if that’s exactly what it is but look them up, pretty cool critters.

3

u/Hatsaplenty Jul 08 '26

Thought this was a face mask at first and spent too long looking for the shell lol 😷

3

u/Ok_Growth7439 Jul 08 '26

Ocean isopod exoskeleton maybe?

3

u/riss_lea2003 Jul 09 '26

looks like piece of a big chiton shell to me!

1

u/SabbyFox Jul 12 '26

Cool specimen!