Chrysomallon squamiferum lives at hydrothermal vents on the Indian Ocean ridges, where mineral-laden fluid meets cold seawater. Its foot is armoured with hundreds of overlapping sclerites, and in populations at the iron-rich Kairei field these scales and the outermost of the shell's three layers contain greigite and pyrite, iron sulphide minerals.
The structure is layered: an iron sulphide outer coat, an organic middle layer, and an aragonite inner layer. Together they appear to blunt and deflect crushing attacks, and the arrangement has been examined by materials researchers for that reason. Snails from the Solitaire field, where fluid chemistry differs, lack the iron coating entirely and are white, which shows that the mineralisation depends on local water chemistry rather than being obligatory.
The animal does not feed conventionally. It has a vestigial gut and an oesophageal gland enlarged to a large fraction of body volume, packed with chemosynthetic bacteria that supply its nutrition. Its heart is correspondingly enormous, roughly four per cent of body volume, apparently to keep those symbionts supplied with oxygen. It was assessed as Endangered in 2019 because deep-sea mining licences overlap its only three known sites.