Image of Crown Cone

Description:

A live specimen of the Crown Cone, Conus regius Gmelin, 1791, was found and collected at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, off the Texas coast, at 20 m depth. Note that collection in the sanctuary is restricted and only possible with a research permit, as it was the case here. The specimen was heavily encrusted with coraline algae which made its identification difficult. The specimen was sent to Conus expert, Dr. Alan Kohn, who cleaned the specimen and identified it as Conus regius. Although it is a common species, he had not studied its radula before, but it is now illustrated in is excellent book, Conus of the Southeastern United States and Caribbean (Kohn, 2014), published by Princeton University Press: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10229.html The animal had a bright red foot and proboscis, as seen in the photographs. I'm including a photo of a different shell to show how a clean specimen looks like. Read more about this species in Tunnell et al. (2010) Encyclopedia of Texas Seashells, p. 237.