Conus aratispira (Pilsbry, 1905)

Descrizione

Shell slender and long, with high, turreted spire, biconic, the cone of the spire about one-third the total length, somewhat terraced, the whorls angular in the middle, smooth below the angle, steeply sloping and marked with 4 or 5 spiral grooves above it, the shoulder of the inter mediate whorls very weakly tuberculate in well-preserved specimens ⁽¹⁾.

Last whorl obliquely striate toward the base, the grooves and convexintervals of equal size below, but upwards they become more widely spaced, with wide fiat intervals. The aperture is narrow, its length about three-fourths that of the shell ⁽¹⁾.

Length 42, diam. 13,5 mm.

Length about 48, diam. 16 mm.

Kikai, Osumi, in a deposit of probably Pliocene age. Tjrpes No. 88.297, A. N. S. P., from No. 1,579 of Mr. Hirase's collection ⁽¹⁾.

This belongs to a small group of cones with the spire much elevated ⁽¹⁾.

Wall, in 1979, said of Conus aratispira: “a fossil name often allied with Conus milneedwardsi, but since it has no color pattern it cannot be satisfactorily placed with any living species” ⁽²⁾.

Whether the recent populations of C. milneedwardsi kawamurai and the Pleistocene C. aratispira (Pilsbry, 1905) from Kikai, Osumi (Japan), are the same species, as considered by Matsukuma, Okutani & Habe, 1991, cannot be unequivocally determined (Walls, [1979], Yoshiba, 1990); similarities in shape are not sufficient to justify such a hypothesis ⁽³⁾; however, in 2000, Paul Callomon ⁽²⁾, using UV light, was able to obtain a photograph in which the coloring of the two ANSP specimens is present, therefore the hypothesis that Conus kawamurai is a descendant of Conus aratispira, if not even the same species, has returned to be considered valid.


Conus aratispira ⁽¹⁾ Plate II fig. 1 Type ANSP 88296 Is Ryukyu - Kikai, Osumi Pliocene

the smaller syntype Fig. 1 right ANSP 88297 mm.42,1 Lectotype of Conus aratispira ⁽²⁾	The former syntype Fig.1 left ANSP 403173 mm. 47,0 Paralectotype ⁽²⁾