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Arene flexispina Leal and Coelho, 1985 |
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Dredged at 60–80 meters, off Alcobaça, Bahia State, Brazil, 2/2018 (7.6 mm.). Digital image courtesy of Simon Aiken. |
| The senior author, Dr. José Leal of the Bailey Matthews National Shell Museum, reminisced as follows: "This species carries an added value to me, in terms of my relationship with it and the associated twists and turns. I first obtained the type series as a grad student, during a marine geology sampling cruise sponsored by the Brazilian Navy. We collected them in a small area off Bahia, just outside of the Abrolhos Archipelago. The material was collected via a small bottom grab that catches the equivalent of a couple of gallons of sediment. This was 1978. Paper was published in The Nautilus in 1985, my first new species, first article in our journal. In 1987 I returned to the area with Philippe Bouchet, for the now legendary cruise MD55 of the R/V Marion-Dufresne. I convinced Philippe to speak with Monsieur Le Capitain, who would have to change the cruise plan slightly to get to the type locality. Philippe twisted the captain’s arm (after much debacle), we moved to the best approximation of the spot, dredged, and collected more specimens, nine years after the original collection of types. I imagine the type of flexispina was saved from burning in the early September, 2018 fire at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro." |
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