It’s What was for Dinner There are 650 species of river snails
in North America which makes this continent the richest in the
world for these tiny animals. Many of these are shell dwelling
soft bodied gastropods that live in the streams and rivers of
the southeastern region of our country. Within this group is a
genus called Leptoxis (or more commonly known as Anculosa) which
are gill breathing and operculum bearing snails that usually
live in the bottom of reasonably fast flowing streams in the
middle South to southern Midwest. Of the thirty three known
members of the Leptoxis genus, many are now threatened with
extinction because of river impoundment and siltation and
industrial/agricultural pollutions. But during the prehistoric
times in the region, the natives consumed the little mollusk
Anculosa because it was available in enormous numbers and became
what was for dinner. Most of us contemporary people would not
wish to gather river snails for food but beginning perhaps as
far back as the Paleo Period (10