Gigantopelta chessoia
| Gigantopelta chessoia | |
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Gigantopelta chessoia The scale bar is 1 cm. |
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| View of a number of Gigantopelta chessoia (the brown snails) partially covered by limpets Lepetodrilus sp. (the small yellow-greenish oval shapes) at the East Scotia Ridge E2 hydrothermal vent site in the Scotia Sea. The scale bar is 10 cm. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Vetigastropoda |
| Superfamily: | Neomphaloidea |
| Family: | Peltospiridae |
| Genus: | Gigantopelta |
| Species: | G. chessoia |
| Binomial name | |
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Gigantopelta chessoia Chen, Linse, Roterman, Copley & Rogers, 2015 |
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Gigantopelta chessoia is a species of deep sea snail from hydrothermal vents, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Peltospiridae.
The first information about this species, under the name "Peltospiroidea n. sp." or "peltospiroid gastropod", was published on 3 January 2012. Peltospiroidea is the name of a superfamily of gastropods that was used in the taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Ponder & Lindberg, 1997). It contained the only extant family Peltospiridae (and some prehistoric gastropod families). However, the taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005) does not use the name Peltospiroidea (in that system, the family Peltopiridae is placed within the Neomphaloidea).
It was described as a new species within new genus Gigantopelta in 2015 and it was classified within the family Peltospiridae.
This species is known from two sites near hydrothermal vents in the East Scotia Ridge of the south Atlantic Ocean: from 2,394 m depth at the E9 vent site and from the 2,608 m depth at the E2 site.
The color of the shell is dark olive. The shell has three to four whorls. The width of the shell is from 4.21–45.7 mm. Body size of the juvenile snail is 2 mm, while body size of the adult is 50 mm.
It has non-papillate tentacles.
The digestive system: there is one pair of radula cartilages. The digestive tract is short and consist of a single loop. The rectum does not penetrate the heart. The radula consist of 1.4% of body volume in juveniles and radula cartilages consist of 2.6% of body volume in juveniles.
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