Murex trunculus
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Hexaplex trunculus Temporal range: Pliocene - Recent |
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| Hexaplex trunculus | |
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| Hexaplex trunculus | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| (unranked): | clade Caenogastropoda clade Hypsogastropoda clade Neogastropoda |
| Superfamily: | Muricoidea |
| Family: | Muricidae |
| Genus: | Hexaplex |
| Subgenus: | Trunculariopsis |
| Species: | H. trunculus |
| Binomial name | |
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Hexaplex trunculus (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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| Synonyms | |
Hexaplex trunculus (also known as Murex trunculus, Phyllonotus trunculus, or the banded dye-murex) is a medium-sized species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex shells or rock snails.
This species is known in the fossil record from the Pliocene to the Quaternary period (age range: from 3.6 to 0.012 million years ago). Fossil shells within this genus have been found in Morocco, Italy, and Spain.
This species of sea snail is important historically because its hypobranchial gland secretes a mucus that most ancient people's of the mediterranean from the Minoans to the ancient Canaanites/Phoenicians and classical Greeks used as a distinctive purple-blue indigo dye. One of the dye's main chemical ingredients is dibromo-indigotin, and if left in the sun for a few minutes before becoming fast, its color turns to a blue indigo (like the dye used in blue jeans).
This species lives in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa, specifically Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Canary Islands, Azores.
This murex occurs in shallow, sublittoral waters.
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