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Carinaria lamarckii
Péron & Lesueur in Blainville, 1810
Worldwide warm seas; more common in the atlantic area than in the indo-pacific. Epipelagic, it lives in free waters down to circa 200m deep. Predator on mobile preys. Local synonym: mediterranea. Beached in the Faro, Messina, NE. Sicily. 10mm.
Carinaria mediterranea in H.-M. D. de Blainville: Manuel de malacologie et de conchyliologie, Paris 1827, plate XLVII.
 
When swimming, unlike what shows the drawing, the animal is upside down: the dorsal shell below, the ventral side, with its undulating fin, on top.
Pterotrachea lophyra in S. delle Chiaje: Memorie sulla storia e notomia degli animali senza vertebre del regno di Napoli vol. plates, Napoli 1822, plate XIV.
 
« Corpore crystalino, muricato; cauda acutissima, superne cristata; ventre pinna orbiculari, reticulato-fibrosa, acetabuloque insignita; dorso testa geleaeformi, fragili, vitrea, viscera tegente communita, branchiis pinnatis, extra concham pendulis. » – vol. II, pp. 199-202.
A specimen found off Mljet island, Dubrovnik-Neretva Comitat, S. Croatia. 11mm. Original pictures provided by N. Lete (HR).
(CC BY-NC-SA)
« Fragile and prized by collectors, this shell has at the base of its dextral winding a small spiral that served as shelter to the juvenile form of the individual. » (DORIS). – Above, this shell of a juvenile from Capo Teulada, Cagliari, S. Sardinia. 1mm.

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