by Matt Law

Kingdom - Animalia

Phylum - Mollusca

Class - Gastropoda

Subclass - Prosobranchia

Order - Monotocardia

Superfamily - Rissoacea

Family - Hydrobiidae

Genus - Ventrosia

Species- Ventrosia ventrosa (Montagu, 1803)

Syn. Hydrobia ventrosa (Montagu, 1803)

Ventrosia ventrosa (Montagu 1803), sub-fossil from Pawlett, Somerset, UK. Photo by Matt Law

Ventrosia ventrosa is a prosobranch gastropod that lives in brackish water, with a shell around 4.5 mm high. It occurs at salinities of 6-25 parts per thousand (Graham 1988, 190), and it can be found in lagoons where there is no direct marine influence.

In the UK, it has been reported on a number of sites on the Severn Estuary, both on the Welsh side (Bell and Johnson 1997; Johnson and Bell 2004) and the English side (Law, unpublished data 2010). Often these are in very high numbers in assemblages of extremely restricted diversity (Bell 2001, 86). At Caldicot in Gwent,  occasional finds of V. ventrosa were attributed to episodes of marine flooding (Bell and Johnson 1997, 141).

References

Bell, M., 2001, Environmental Archaeology in the Severn Estuary: Progress and Prospects, in Rippon, S., (Ed.), Estuarine Archaeology: The Severn and Beyond (Archaeology in the Severn Estuary 11), 69-105

Bell, M., and Johnson, S., 1997, The Molluscs, in Nayling, N., and Caseldine, A., (Eds.), Excavations at Caldicot, Gwent: Bronze Age Palaeochannels in the Lower Nedern Valley, CBA Research Report 108, (York: CBA), 128-141

Graham, A., 1988, Molluscs: Prosobranch and Pyramidellid Gastropods, Synopses of the British Fauna 2 (2nd Edition) Leiden: Brill/ Backhuys.

Johnson, S., and Bell, M., 2004, Mollusca, in Nayling, N., and McGrail, S., (Eds.), The Barland's Farm Romano-Celtic Boat, CBA Research Report 138 (York: CBA), 59-61

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