Graham Oliver as the Museum of Wales Cardiff, UK

Thanks Michel

Professor P.J. Schembri, from the University of Malta

I agree Patrick Schembri would also be good, if you email both they will also have a good list of contacts who may be able to help you and who have specific expertise that you need. Both are very nice people, so they will respond to you.

You may communicate with Prof. Antony S. Fernando (Retd.), Faculty of Marine Sciences, Annamalai University, Parangipettai, Tamil Nadu 608502, INDIA. He is an expert in the subject.

You may get his details to communicate from the Director of the Centre ([email protected] ; [email protected]).

Best wishes

DB

Dr. Serge Gofas

Departemento de Biología Animal, Facultad de Ciences-E-29071, Málaga, Spain email: [email protected]

It is very interesting study, I have worked on the biodiversity of Bivalve and gastropod mollusks , specially from the central west coast of India. Also i have did the work on taxonomy and nomenclature of mollusks specially gastropod and ecology of the coast. if u have any dought regarding the taxonomic work please feel free contact on me...

Thank you very much Anil

Well, there are as many experts as marine snails families and orders. Nevertheless, I suggest you to get in touch with Henk K. Mienis, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is in charge of the malacological collection of the national collections of natural history and knows very well the malacofauna of the Red Sea and from the Indian Ocean. He will be pleased to help you. His email address is [email protected] (if he hasn't changed the address). Just a suggestion. If by chance your abalone-like gastropod lacks small holes along the border of the spirally coiled shell then maybe you have collected a Stomatellidae. In this case I suggest you to contacy Dai Herbert

from Prof. D.G. Herbert

Chief Curator: Mollusca

KwaZulu-NatalMuseum, P. Bag 9070, Pietermaritzburg 3200, South Africa

Tel. +27 333410523 or +27 333451404

Fax +27 333450561

I hope it helps.

Best regards.

If it is an abalone for real the best would be Daniel Geiger or Buzz Owen. They are focusing on worlwide Haliotis from decades...if you want to do it by yourself I would suggest this book, that will bring you to most of the papers you will need to be certain of an identification. However, also the book is by Geiger and Owen (very nice I must admit)

http://www.sbnature.org/crc/746.html