Clams, snails, and squids, oh my!
Escargot, anyone? The Harvard Museum of Natural History is offering a molluskan feast — for the eyes, anyway — in the new exhibit “Mollusks: Shelled Masters of the Marine Realm,” which recently opened in the museum’s temporary exhibit hall. The exhibit, which will be on display for the next two years, presents a colorful depiction of the diversity of the mollusk branch of the tree of life, spanning everything from the giant clam — a 30-inch shell on display weighs 200 pounds — to the octopus. In between are the flat, orange, lion’s paw scallop; the tall, cylindrical, watering pot clam; an arthritic spider conch whose six splayed points extend from its shell; and a Venus comb murex, whose shell displays rows of long, comb-like, narrow spikes. The exhibit also includes a case holding specimens from the museum’s glass sea creatures collection, which was created in the 1800s by Leopold and Rudolph Baschka,...