bivalve

In 2006 two eager shell collectors hauled in some small but strangely shaped mollusks in deep water off Key West, Florida. Like the good animal nerds they were, they brought their findings to a shell collectors convention in Mobile, Alabama where the Director of the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum on Sanibel Island, Jose H. Leal, took up the challenge of identifying the critters. Two years later, Leal finally published his findings in the May 7th edition of Zootaxa, announcing that the heart-shaped bivalves were an entirely new genus. As explained to Florida's News-Press by Leal, "This…