Cypraeoidea
| Cypraeoidea | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| A live cowry Cypraea chinensis, with its mantle fully extended, head end to the left | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): |
clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda |
| Superfamily: |
Cypraeoidea Rafinesque, 1815 |
clade Hypsogastropoda
clade Littorinimorpha
Cypraeoidea, the cowries and cowry allies, is a superfamily of sea snails, marine gastropods included in the clade Littorinimorpha. This superfamily had been called Cypraeacea and was named by Rafinesque in 1815.
This superfamily of sea snails have adult shells which do not look like typical gastropod shells because the spire of the shell is not visible in adults, instead the shells are: often quite rounded in shape, varying from globular to elongate, and with a long, very narrow, aperture which is sometimes toothed. The snails in these families have no operculum.
The shells of almost every species in this superfamily are very smooth and shiny, and this is because in the living animal, the shell is nearly always fully covered with the mantle.
The largest known fossil cowry was Gisortia gigantiea Munster, 1828 which reached a length of 350mm. The largest modern cowry is the Atlantic Deer Cowry (Macrocypraea cervus) at up to 190mm. The largest known cowry from any extant subfamily or genus was the Australian cowry Zoila (Gigantocypraea) gigas (McCoy, 1867) at about 247mm.
This superfamily used to be known as Cypraeacea. Prior to the recent ruling by the ICZN, many invertebrate superfamily names ended in the suffix -acea, or -aceae, not -oidea as now required according to ICZN article 29.2. The suffix -oidea used to be used for some subclasses and superorders, where it is stll found. In much of the older literature including Keen 1958, gastropod superfamilies are written with the suffix -acea.
The following two subfamilies were recognized in the taxonomy of Bouchet & Rocroi (2005):
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