Alexander the Great (Indus Delta) part 29
Posted on 11/27/2019 8:57:31 AM PST by SunkenCiv
Snails known as impressed odostomes, Boonea impressa, are common parasites of oysters, latching onto a shell and inserting a stylus to slurp the soft insides. Because the snail has a predictable 12-month life cycle, its length at death offers a reliable estimate of when the oyster host died, allowing Florida Museum of Natural History researchers Nicole Cannarozzi and Michal Kowalewski to use it as a tiny seasonal clock for when people collected and ate oysters in the past.
Stowaways on discarded oyster shells, the snails offer new insights into an old question about the shell rings that dot the coasts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi.
"People have been debating the purpose of these shell rings for a very long time," said Cannarozzi, the study's lead author and Florida Museum environmental archaeology collection manager. "Were they everyday food waste heaps? Temporary communal feasting sites? Or perhaps a combination? Understanding the seasonality of the rings sheds new light on their function."
Cannarozzi and Kowalewski, Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology, analyzed oysters and snails from a 230-foot-wide, 4,300-year-old shell ring on St. Catherines Island and compared them with live oysters and snails. They found that island inhabitants were primarily harvesting oysters during late fall, winter and spring, which also suggested the presence of people on the island tapered off during the summer.
The seasonality of the shell ring may be one of the earliest records of sustainable harvesting, Cannarozzi said. Oysters in the Southeast spawn from May to October, and avoiding oyster collection in the summer may help replenish their numbers.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
I love mignonette sauce on fresh shucked oysters - food of the Gods. Oyster stuffing today, have to make it separate so the wife doesn’t freak - she’s not enlightened like some of us. Happy Thanksgiving, FRiend.
He was a quiet man, kept to himself. It’s lucky for everyone that he came out of his shell.
HT: Perhaps what makes it hard to make sense of this paragraph is the ambiguity of the phrase “its length at death.” I think that these spiral snails grew longer the older they got and therefore you could estimate their age by how long the shells had grown. Since they probably still start their 12 month cycle at roughly the same time and grow at roughly the same rate, you can then tell at which month the oyster they were on was killed and eaten and thus the month the snail died.
That’s the guy...
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