About Turbo argyrostomus Linnaeus, 1758
This species reaches a maximum length of 9 centimeters. Its shell is solid, large, and has an ovate-pointed shape. Turbo argyrostomus is a highly variable species. The shell has a cream base color, with irregular greenish and brown blotches, plus broken black lines. The apex is almost always pink. There are six convex whorls, separated by subcanaliculate sutures. The upper two whorls are smooth, while the lower whorls are spirally lirate and more or less radiately squamose striate. The lirae are sometimes subequal and nearly smooth. The main body whorl has 20 distinct, mostly flat-topped spiral ribs, some of which have fluted scales. The body whorl contains around thirteen lirae, which are generally wider than the interstices between them; the subcoronal lira and one or two median lirae are more prominent. The penultimate and final whorls have numerous elevated vaulted scales on their lirae. The aperture is pearly white or tinted brownish internally, and makes up around half the total length of the shell. It is round-ovate, angled at the upper end, and dilated and subchannelled below. The columella is thickened, somewhat flattened, and grooved below the narrow, deeply perforating umbilicus. The operculum is flat on its inner side, with 5 whorls. Its nucleus is located one-third of the way across the operculum's face. The outer surface of the operculum is convex, covered in coarse obtuse granules that are largest in the higher region, and is nearly surrounded by a marginal row of fine oblique wrinkles. The operculum is white, more or less tinged with flesh color across its outer half, and has a narrow marginal orange line. This species and its subspecies are distributed in the Red Sea and the tropical Indo-West Pacific. They occur off Aldabra, Chagos, Madagascar, the Mascarene Basin, Mozambique, Tanzania, the Andaman Islands, the Nicobar Islands, East India, and the Philippines, as well as off Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia in Australia.
