Conus ambiguus, common name The Doubtful Cone, is a species of sea snail

Sea snail

Sea snail is a common name for those snails that normally live in saltwater, marine gastropod molluscs....

, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Conidae, the cone snails

Conus

Conus is a large genus of small to large predatory sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs, with the common names of cone snails, cone shells or cones. This genus is placed in the subfamily Coninae within the family Conidae. Geologically speaking, the genus is known from the Eocene to the Recent ...

 and their allies.

Like all species within the genus Conus, these snails are predatory and venomous. They are capable of "stinging" humans, therefore live ones should be handled carefully or not at all.

Description

Conus ambiguus was originally discovered and described in both identical Latin and English language texts by Lovell Augustus Reeve

Lovell Augustus Reeve

Lovell Augustus Reeve was an English conchologist.Lovell Augustus Reeve was initially apprenticed to a grocer of Ludgate Hill between 1827 and '34...

 in 1844.

Reeve's type description reads as follows:
The shell

Gastropod shell

The gastropod shell is a shell which is part of the body of a gastropod or snail, one kind of mollusc. The gastropod shell is an external skeleton or exoskeleton, which serves not only for muscle attachment, but also for protection from predators and from mechanical damage...

 of Conus ambiguus is whitish, with obscure, light brown bands, and longitudinal streaks. The spire

Spire (mollusc)

A spire is a descriptive term for part of the coiled shell of mollusks. The word is a convenient aid in describing shells, but it does not refer to a very precise part of shell anatomy: the spire consists of all of the whorls except for the body whorl...

 is ornamented with arched brownish spots.

The height of the shell is 1.5 inches (3.8 cm).

Dimensions of the shell of type specimen is 39 x 22 mm. The type specimen is stored in Zoölogisch Museum Amsterdam (Zoological Museum of the University of Amsterdam).