Scaly-foot gastropod — printable fact sheet
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Scaly-foot gastropod
Chrysomallon squamiferum
The scaly-foot gastropod (Chrysomallon squamiferum) lives only at a handful of deep hydrothermal vent fields in the Indian Ocean, at depths around 2,400 to 2,900 metres. It is the only animal known to build iron sulfide into its skeleton: the hundreds of overlapping scales armou…
Did you know?
- This species is so specialized to vent environments that it cannot survive outside of hydrothermal vent fields.
- Scaly-foot snails from the Kairei vent field are iron-plated and black, but those at the Solitaire field lack the iron sulfide coating and appear white, showing the armour depends on local vent chemistry. Its blood is unusually rich in haemocyanin, and the giant heart is visible as a pale mass filling much of the body cavity. All three known populations sit inside areas licensed for exploration of polymetallic sulfide deposits. The snail is a hermaphrodite and, unlike most vent animals, appears to lack the swimming larval stage that would let it colonise new vents easily.
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