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The museum’s anthropology, ethnography, palaeontology, geology, entomology, arachnology and malacology collections were all housed in the palace – and most of them were destroyed, she said.

As Distel worked on his research, he kept an eye out for Kuphus, which had gained a reputation as the Loch Ness monster of malacology.

Dirks recently studied snails under some of the top researchers in the field of malacology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Bouchet is head of malacology in the natural history museum in Paris and has named more than 500 species new to science himself.

"There's enough here to keep us busy for a very long time," said malacology collections manager Paul Callomon.