Cremnoconchus carinatus is a species

Species

In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...

 of freshwater snail

Freshwater snail

A freshwater snail is one kind of freshwater mollusc, the other kind being freshwater clams and mussels, i.e. freshwater bivalves. Specifically a freshwater snail is a gastropod that lives in a watery non-marine habitat. The majority of freshwater gastropods have a shell, with very few exceptions....

, an aquatic 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...

 Littorinidae

Littorinidae

Littorinidae is a taxonomic family of over 200 species of sea snails, marine gastropod molluscs in the clade Littorinimorpha, commonly known as periwinkles and found world-wide.-Names:...

, the winkles or periwinkles.

Distribution

This species is endemic to the Western Ghats

Western Ghats

The Western Ghats, Western Ghauts or the Sahyādri is a mountain range along the western side of India. It runs north to south along the western edge of the Deccan Plateau, and separates the plateau from a narrow coastal plain along the Arabian Sea. The Western Ghats block rainfall to the Deccan...

 range, in India.

The type locality for this species is streams in Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar

Mahabaleshwar is a city and a municipal council in Satara district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a hill station located in the Western Ghats range. With one of the few evergreen forests of the world, it served as the summer capital of Bombay province during the British Raj.-Geography...

 Hills, the Western Ghats range, India. It lives about 4500 feet (1,371.6 m) above the sea level.

In 1869

Description

Cremnoconchus carinatus was originally discovered and described from a juvenile shell (under the name Anculotus carinatus) by the English naturalist Edgar Leopold Layard

Edgar Leopold Layard

Edgar Leopold Layard CMG, FZS, MBOU was a British naturalist mainly interested in ornithology. Born in Florence, Italy, to a family of Huguenot descent, he was the sixth son of Henry Peter John Layard of the Ceylon Civil Service with his wife Marianne,...

 in 1854. Layard's original text (the type description) reads as follows:
In 1869, another English naturalist, William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford

William Thomas Blanford was an English geologist and naturalist. He is best remembered as the editor of a major series on The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma.-Biography:Blanford was born in London...

, moved this species to the newly created genus Cremnoconchus.

In the adult shell the last whorl is angulate below the suture and at the periphery. The shell is imperforate, ovately conical, with the apex

Apex (mollusc)

Apex is an anatomical term for the tip of the mollusc shell of a gastropod, scaphopod, or cephalopod mollusc.-Gastropods:The word "apex" is most often used to mean the tip of the spire of the shell of a gastropod...

eroded. The width of the shell is 5.5 mm. The height of the shell is 8 mm.