''A Roman snail, a cockle and a cuttlefish, on first sight, seem not to have
too much in common, except all three of them may be found on man's menu's.
Humans have been eating mussels and clams since the Palaeolithic, as can be
proved by the so-called "Møddenkøkkinger". Those palaeolithic heaps
of mussel shells have been excavated at the sites of human settlement near the
coast. In a similar way Roman snail shells have been found at Roman excavation
sites (hence the snail's name!).
But looking at the external appearance of all three animals from a
biologist's eye, they all appear rather different. All three have a hard
calcareous outer shell. But the snail's shell is coiled like a spiral (see:
"The Way Snail Shells Are Coiled"),
the cockle has got two shell valves (hence "Bivalvia") and the
cuttlefish, finally even has got an internal shell, the cuttlebone..''
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