Word: mollusks
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...Prize, 1934) proved three years ago that certain fossil sea shells can be used as fossil thermometers to measure "paleotemperatures." His method takes advantage of the fact that normal oxygen contains two stable isotopes, oxygen 18 and oxygen 16, in the proportion of 1 to 500. When a sea mollusk takes up calcium carbonate (CaCO3) to build its shell, the proportions of the oxygen isotopes in it vary with the temperature of the sea water. The warmer the water the less oxygen 18 is built into the shell...
...request of the Navy, which is responsible for many Pacific islands, the National Research Council sent Mollusk Expert Dr. Francis X. Williams to Africa to look for the big snail's enemies. In Kenya he found small, fierce, carnivorous snails boring into big achatinas with sharp, file-like teeth. He also found snail-eating beetles, and took both finds back to Hawaii, where they are still penned up carefully for observation. Some biologists fear that if the beetles and small snails exterminate the giant snails, they might look around for other food and become pests themselves...
...different species of Mollusca on the island and in its waters. That was about the time Dwight Taylor of Pasadena, now a bright-eyed, serious 17-year-old, began his collection. Dwight kept picking up sea shells until he had picked up 120 species of them, and enough mollusk lore to write a dozen-page scientific treatise: "A Malacological Survey of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts...
Fast Enough. How fast is a snail's pace? At College Park, Md., U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service conchologists (mollusk fanciers) were measuring to find out. Dr. Paul Galtsoff puts a seagoing snail inside a drum of transparent plastic. When the snail moves (either forward or backward) the drum revolves, recording the snail's motion on a sheet of smoked paper. Conchs move fastest: an average 19 feet an hour. Little oyster drills, one inch long, move only a couple of feet...
...confused. The people I thought were for me, were against me. I'm 60 and if I ever do another stroke of work in my life I'm a sucker. I'm going to lie on a beach and not even think, and just be a mollusk." It was hard for Philadelphia to believe that Stern could ever take it easy. Some guessed that he and his son, David III, publisher of the Camden papers, would take their money (around $10 million, less $5½ million in debts) and buy something else with...