Wholesale Sand Dollars Sea Biscuits

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The term "sand dollar" derives from the appearance of the tests (skeletons) of dead individuals after being washed ashore. The test lacks its velvet-like skin of spines and has often been bleached white by sunlight. To beachcombers of the past, this suggested a large, silver coin, such as the old Spanish or American dollar (diameter 38-40mm).Other English names for the creatures include sand cake and cake urchin. In South Africa, they are known as pansy shells from their suggestion of a five-petaled garden flower. The Caribbean sanddollar or inflated sea biscuit, Clypeaster rosaceus, is thicker in height than most.In Spanish-speaking areas of the Americas, the sand dollar is most often known as galleta de mar (sea cookie); the translated term is often encountered in English. The various common terms (sand dollar, sea biscuit, etc.) sometimes appear printed in hyphenated forms (sand-dollar, sea-biscuit).Sanddollars live beyond the mean low water line on top of or just beneath the surface of sandy or muddy areas. The spines on the somewhat flattened underside of the animal allow it to burrow or to slowly creep through the sediment. Fine, hair-like cilia cover the tiny spines. Podia that line the food grooves move food to the mouth opening, which is in the center of the star-shaped grooves on the underside of the animal (called the oral surface). Its food consists of crustacean larvae, small copepods, diatoms, algae and detritus. On the ocean bottom, sand dollars are frequently found together. This is due in part to their preference for soft bottom areas, which are convenient for their reproduction. The sexes are separate and, as with most echinoids, gametes are released into the water column. They are conceived by external fertilization, as with most echinoids. The nektonic larvae metamorphose through several stages before the skeleton or test begins to form, at which point they become benthos.
In 2008, biologists learned sanddollar larvae clone themselves as a mechanism of self-defense. Larvae exposed to mucus from predatory fish respond to the threat by cloning themselves, thus doubling their numbers while effectively halving their size. The smaller larvae are better able to escape detection by fish, but may be more vulnerable to predation by smaller animals, such as crustaceans. Sand dollars in their mature form have few natural predators, though ocean pouts and sunflower starfishes are known to eat them on occas The ancestors of the sanddollars diverged from the other irregular echinoids, namely the cassiduloids, during the early Jurassic, with the first true sand dollar genus, Togocyamus, arising during the Paleocene. Soon after Togocyamus, more modern-looking groups emerged during the Eocene. A variety of imaginative associations have been made by idle beachcombers who run across the bleached skeletons of dead sand dollars. The tests are sometimes said to represent coins lost by mermaids or the people of Atlantis. Christian missionaries found symbolism in the fivefold radial pattern and dove-shaped internal structures. 'Aristotle's lantern' has been discerned in the distinctive perforations of keyhole sanddollars.

Sanddollars

Arrowhead 5-5-1/2"

Washington Sanddollar

Sea Biscuit 1

Keyhole Sanddollar