Nassa (gastropod)

Nassa is a genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the family Muricidae, the murex snails or rock snails.

The history of the name Nassa is rather confused, because the name was allocated twice:

In the 19th and much of the 20th century, all species that were added to the genus Nassa were Nassa mud snails belonging to the family Nassariidae. After the rediscovery of Röding's catalogue of his collection Museum Boltenianum sive catalogus cimeliorum e tribus regnis naturæ quæ olim collegerat Joa. Fried Bolten, M. D. p. d. per XL. annos proto physicus Hamburgensis. Pars secunda continens conchylia sive testacea univalvia, bivalvia & multivalvia, the muricid genus Nassa Röding, 1798 was given priority over the genus Nassa named by Lamarck.

Nassa Lamarck was then synonymized with its oldest synonym Nassarius Duméril, 1806 by a ruling of the ICZN Op. 96, Direction 48 (21 Nov 1956) and then to Nassarius (Sphaeronassa) Locard, 1886