Editing Seashell (section)

==== Identification ====
[[File:Concha com pintura (1.2), Acervo do Museu do Colono (Santa Leopoldina).jpg|thumb|A [[Conch shell]], often [[Conch (instrument)|used as a musical instrument]]]]
Seashells are usually identified by consulting general or regional shell-collecting [[field guide]]s, and specific scientific books on different taxa of shell-bearing mollusks ([[monograph]]s) or "iconographies" (limited text – mainly photographs or other illustrations). (For a few titles on this subject in the US, see the list of books at the foot of this article.) Identifications to the species level are generally achieved by examining illustrations and written descriptions, rather than by the use of [[Identification key]]s, as is often the case in identifying plants and other phyla of invertebrates. The construction of functional keys for the identification of the shells of marine mollusks to the species level can be very difficult, because of the great variability within many species and families. The identification of certain individual species is often very difficult, even for a specialist in that particular family. Some species cannot be differentiated on the basis of shell character alone.

Numerous smaller and more obscure mollusk species (see [[micromollusk]]) are yet to be discovered and named. In other words, they have not yet been differentiated from similar species and assigned scientific (binomial) names in articles in journals recognized by the [[International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature]] (ICZN). Large numbers of new species are published in the scientific literature each year. There are currently an estimated 100,000 species of mollusks worldwide.