Utriculina gibbosa (Born, 1778)

Distribution: Western Indo-Pacific realm. West and South Indian Shelf province (SE India, Sri Lanka). Bay of Bengal province (E India). Andaman province (Thailand, Western Sumatra, Indonesia).

RV 2113. Sri Lanka, Gulf of Mannar; by diver; June 19, 1975. Scale bar is 1 cm.

RV 2207a-b. Thailand, Phuket Island; trawled; June 1973.

Considerable numbers of shells of this species are exported out of India and Sri Lanka each year, as part of the shell craft industry. Natural as well as manufactured specimens, of which the outer shell layer has been removed mechanically, find their way to customers worldwide. The mechanical removal of the outer layer seems to have a long standing history as such a specimen was already figured by Knorr (1771: Pl 4 fig. 4).