#4810 · 🐌 snails, slugs & other molluscs
Mossy Chiton
Mopalia muscosa
🐌 Snails, slugs & other molluscs 📍 outside Europe
8 photos from iNaturalist (Creative Commons) · credits & licences
what is it?
Mopalia muscosa (Gould, 1846) is a species of chiton, a polyplacophoran, an eight-plated marine mollusk. It is a northeastern Pacific species which occurs from British Columbia, Canada, to Baja California Mexico.
base stats
Bars compare against all animals on log scales: up to 300,000 Dutch and 600,000 worldwide sightings (the most-seen species), 150 t (blue whale), 30 m and 400 years (Greenland shark).
fun facts
- No confirmed wild sightings in the Netherlands on iNaturalist: you'd have to travel for this one.
- 17,309 observations worldwide on iNaturalist.
- Scientifically named by Augustus Addison Gould in 1846 (180 years ago).
fact sheet
- English
- Mossy Chiton
- scientific name
- Mopalia muscosa
- class
- Polyplacophora
- order
- Chitonida
- family
- Mopaliidae
- sightings in NL
- 0
- sightings worldwide
- 17,309
- GBIF records in NL
- 0
- weight
- —
- length
- —
- lifespan
- —
- named
- 1846 by Augustus Addison Gould
relatives· Mopaliidae
Sources: iNaturalist taxon 117633, Wikidata Q3074163, GBIF 2306057, Wikipedia (EN), Wikipedia (NL). Intro text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.