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Based on the fossil record, we explore the macroevolutionary relationship between species richness and gigantism in cowries (Cypraeidae), the best-studied family of gastropods, with a global diversity distribution that parallels that of tropical corals, mangroves and seagrasses. We introduce  Vicetia bizzottoi  sp. nov. based on a Priabonian fossil found in northeastern Italy, the largest documented cowrie found so far and the youngest of a lineage of Eocene Gisortiinae species. The Gisortiinae stratigraphic record in western Europe indicates that species selection favoured large size and armouring of the shell. Palaeoecology and per-stage species richness suggest that gigantism occurred in peripheral habitats with respect to diversity hotspots, where smaller species were favoured. The Eocene–Oligocene boundary was marked by a turnover and the Chattian global warming favoured small-sized species of derived clades. Species selection leading to gigantism is further documented in Miocene lineages of  Zoila  and  Umbilia , in the southern hemisphere, two extant genera distributed at the periphery of modern diversity hotspots, suggesting that the negative relationship between size and diversity is a recurring pattern in the evolutionary history of cowries. This palaeontological evidence is projected onto the existing hypotheses that explain analogous biogeographic patterns in various other taxa. Likewise, body size-species richness negative relationship was possibly driven in cowries by physiological, ecological and life history constraints.

The largest known cowrie and the iterative evolution of giant cypraeid gastropods