Palaeoecology of the giant Eocene gastropod Campanile

The extant Australian gastropod Campanile symbolicum Iredale is a subtidal algal feeder, a habit that has been considered to extend to Paleogene membe rs of this Tethyan genus. Support for this extrapolation is provided by a s pecimen of Campanile sp. A from Wait-a-Bit Cave, parish of Trelawny, Jamaic a, which is unusually preserved as a cast with a dense infestation of the t race fossil Entobia sp. cf. E. laquea Bromley & D'Alessandro (= clionid spo nge boring). This occurrence is considered analogous to infestations of cli onid borings in shells of Recent and Pleistocene Strombus gigas Linne in sh allow-water, Caribbean environments, suggesting that similar examples of su ch large, gastropodal 'benthic islands' may be a possible indicator of shal low sublittoral, tropical settings.