Molluscan Faunas of the United States East Coast: Endemism Along Northeastern North America, Past and Present

The species-richness seen in the living molluscan fauna of the East Coast of the United States is due to its composite nature, containing faunal elements from three contiguous molluscan provinces.These include: the southern warm water Carolinian Molluscan Province (Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Palm Beach, Florida); the central temperate water Virginian Molluscan Province (Cape Cod, Massachusetts to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina); and the northern cold water Acadian Molluscan Province (Labrador, Canada to Cape Cod, Massachusetts).Each of these provinces has been found to house a large component of endemic species, many illustrated for the first time in this book.To place the modern East Coast molluscan fauna within a geochronological perspective, we also give detailed descriptions of the predecessor faunas that are contained in the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene fossil beds of eastern North America.For the first time in any book on American shells, hundreds of extinct species fr