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Cute Young Brunette Girl With Long Hair On The Bed With Sea Shells
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Whole seashells or parts of sea shells have been used as jewelry or in other forms of adornment since prehistoric times. Mother of pearl was historically primarily a seashell product, although more recently some mother of pearl comes from freshwater mussels. Also see pearl.
Shell necklaces have been found in Stone Age graves as far inland as the Dordogne Valley in France.
Seashells are often used whole and drilled, so that they can be threaded like beads, or cut into pieces of various shapes. Sometimes shells can be found that are already "drilled" by predatory snails of the family Naticidae.
Naturally-occurring, beachworn, cone shell "tops" (the broken-off spire of the shell, which often has a hole worn at the tip) can function as beads without any further modification. In Hawaii these natural beads were traditionally collected from the beach drift in order to make puka shell jewelry. Since it is hard to obtain large quantities of naturally-occurring beachworn cone tops, almost all modern puka shell jewelry uses cheaper imitations, cut from thin shells of other species of mollusk, or even made of plastic.
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