Science News
The origin of cowries
PUBLICATION — Nützel, A, Schneider, S., Bakayeva, S., and Kaim, A. 2025. The earliest cowries: the origin of cypraeoid gastropods. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 70 (2): 213–223. doi.org/10.4202/app.01245.2025
On the basis of Late Jurassic fossils from Sicily, Italy, it has been shown that the oldest known cowries belong to a new genus, Coffeacypraea. These cowries probably evolved from the Colombellinidae, an extinct group of gastropods experiencing rapid diversification around that time. The emergence and evolution of both groups contributed considerably to the later explosion of marine gastropod diversity throughout the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.