Necklaces dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic have been recreated from caves in southern Spain, with some of the beads made from the shells of fossilized marine mollusks. Curiously, however, the makers of these ancient adornments appear to have specifically selected two species of scaphopods – or tusk shells – despite the abundance of 24 different species in the nearby Pliocene basins from which they were collected. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The practice of collecting fossils seems to have become popular in Europe during the Stone Age, with evidence of shells and even prehistoric bones being traded over vast exchange networks. However, despite the discovery of numerous fossils at Palaeolithic and Neolithic hunt

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