WHEN YOU
LOOK
Western Bluebird
Pink Mouth Murex
Seek and You Shell Find
When you look at the pink mouth murex, you see wealth.
Sitting in a glass case located in the Orma J. Smith Museum, surrounded by dozens of mollusks, the pink mouth murex bears little description: hexaplex erythrostomus, Indo-Pacific. Its pink interior is a pop of color among the earth tones of the other dozens of shells in the case, which is what caught my eye. I knew some shells were used in the past to make purple dye, and I was delighted to learn this shell was a part of that family. Through all of my research, I was presented with a recurring idea of wealth, but this wealth took on a variety of meanings: material wealth, wealth of knowledge, and symbolic wealth. In these situations, there was also an underlying dichotomy in the acquisition of said wealth. In some cases, it is a wealth of knowledge given to us by the shell’s mere existence. Through observation and analysis, we seek to learn more about and to celebrate the shell. In other cases, we acquired wealth through exploitation. No care was given to the shell or gastropod. Rather, it was entirely disregarded for the sole intent of material or symbolic gains. There is a distinct change in history that took them from an object used for material exploitation to one studied for scientific celebration.
Hexaplex erythrostomus, wikimedia.org
In Greek mythology, purple dye was discovered by the dog of Heracles when he bit into a shell on the beach. This event is depicted in a Peter Paul Rubens painting, though he paints a nautilus shell instead of the accurate murex shell. There is some debate on the exact origins of this purple dye, but it is generally agreed that it began in the Mediterranean region by 1750 BC, likely on the island of Crete by the Minoans. At some point it spread to the city of Tyre, where it earned its name of Tyrian purple. The production of Tyrian purple relied upon tens of thousands of shellfish to produce just a few grams of dye. One Roman tablet reports one pound of dye costing three pounds of gold, which is equivalent to about $20,000. These prices meant that it was a color that could only be afforded by the elite, and so purple began to symbolize royalty; this connotation exists to this day.
Hercules's Dog Discovers Purple Dye
In modern times, shells are extensively studied to understand evolution and ocean conditions throughout history. The world did not look as it does now tens of millions of years ago, and neither did the location or variety of species. As continents shifted and weather patterns changed, so did the distribution and environments of shell species. Shells in the eastern Pacific region, such as the pink mouth murex, likely migrated from the Indo-West Pacific and under speciation, which is when a single species diverges into one or more daughter species, evolved to live in this environment. Shells in this part of the world have very complex architecture on their shells in the form of large spines and other protrusions to protect against breakage from predators. In addition to creating a defense, a mollusk builds up their shell in small layers on a regular basis which can provide insights on weather and breeding patterns of these animals. There is still so much to learn about all species of shells, but research in this field is becoming more advanced, and knowledge about mollusks could become more abundant and thorough in the next few decades.