Keyhole Sand Dollar
Mellita quinquiesperforata
A flat urchin with five slots through the test and a five-petal flower on top.
- Typical size
- 2 to 4 inches
- How often it turns up
- Common
- Collecting
- Restricted
- Handling
- May be alive
Only clean, white, spine-free tests may be collected. Live collection is prohibited in many areas.
If it is brown or fuzzy, it is alive. Put it back in the water, sand side down.
How to tell it apart
- Five elongated slots through the body
- Five-petal pattern on the upper surface
- Bleached white when dead, brown and fuzzy when alive
Found one?
Photograph it and BeachNut will rank the likely matches, then log it to your collection.
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