Topical Guide 722

Mark Dorset

Personages: Fictional: The Gigantic Mortoni

What a Piece of Work I Am: Chapter 38:

     “[…] generations of Babbingtonians were raised on the legend of the clamdigger who wandered all the way to the South Seas in search of the best clam beds. […] They called him the Gigantic Mortoni.”

Carnivora, “Ptychodus mortoni”:

     Ptychodus mortoni was a shark believed to be about 10 m long that probably crushed and ate large shelled animals such as giant clams. It is believed to have been a sluggish bottom-dwelling shark, rather than an actively fast swimmer. It lived about 89 million years ago. Fossils have been found in the Western Interior Seaway, Kansas, USA.

Matt Walker, “Giant predatory shark fossil unearthed in Kansas”:

     The fossilised remains of a gigantic 10m-long predatory shark have been unearthed in Kansas, US.
     Scientists dug up a gigantic jawbone, teeth and scales belonging to the shark which lived 89 million years ago.
     The bottom-dwelling predator had huge tooth plates, which it likely used to crush large shelled animals such as giant clams.

Dmitri Bagdonov, “Ptychodus mortoni” [Note from Wikimedia: This historical image is not a factually accurate paleontological restoration. Reason: Ptychodus is no longer considered as benthic shark. Fin placement.]

Clams: Antigona lamellaris, Tapes literatus, Tridacna gigas

What a Piece of Work I Am: Chapter 38:

     He has lots to tell about the exotic clams to be found there: Antigona lamellaris, for instance, the lamellate Venus, which seems to be covered with little roofing tiles; Tridacna gigas, terror of the sci-fi movies; and my favorite, Tapes literata, the lettered Venus, the writer’s clam, each shell bearing an intriguing epigraph inscribed in something that looks like Assyrian cuneiform or Anglo-Saxon runes.”

Antigona lamellaris (Wikimedia)

Tapes literatus (Natural History Museum Rotterdam, via the World Register of Marine Species)

Charles J. Sharp, Giant clam (Tridacna gigas), Michaelmas Cay, Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia. Via Wikimedia.

See also:

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