The Echinoid Directory

Galeaster Seunes, 1889, p. 821

Diagnostic Features	Test small, cordate in outline and highly inflated; thick-shelled. Apical disc subcentral with four gonopores. Anterior genital plates fused; posterior oculars stretched and separated from posterior genital plates. Posterior gonopores opening on ocular plates II and IV so as to form compact apical disc. Frontal groove relatively wide; starts at apical disc and deepens to ambitus, continuing adorally. Paired ambulacra non-petaloid; pore-pairs rudimentary. Ambulacral plates tall and hexagonal aborally. Peristome small and oval; more or less at anterior border and facing forward into frontal groove. Plastron plating meridosternous - labral plate followed by single large and symmetrical sternal plate. Episternal plates opposite and equal. Plastron plating continuous. Aboral tuberculation fine and uniform. Subanal fasciole present.
Distribution	Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) to Palaeocene; Spain, France, Denmark, Austria, Caucasus, Crimea, Transcaspian, Dagestan, Kazakhstan.
Name gender	masculine
Type	Galeaster bertrandi Seunes, 1889, p. 822, by original designation.
Species Included	Poslavskaia and Moskvin (1960) recognized four species based on slight differences in test profile.
Classification and/or Status	Holasteroida, Meridosternata, Urechinina, Pourtalesiidae. Monotypic.
Remarks	Differs from Basseaster in having a well-defined anterior sulcus and with the peristome positioned much closer to the anterior border. Seunes, 1889. Bulletin de la Societe geologique de France serie 3 17, p. 821. Poslavskaia, N. A. and Moskvin, M. M. 1960. Echinoids of the order Spatangoida in Danian and adjacent deposits of Crimea, Caucasus and the Transcaspian region. Pp. 47-82 in International Geological Congress XXI Session, Reports of Soveit Geologists, problem 5. The Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary. Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Moscow. Jeffery, C. H. 1997. All change at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary? Echinoids from the Maastrichtian and Danian of the Mangyshlak Peninsula, Kazakhstan. Palaeontology 40, 659-712. A. B. Smith & C. H. Jeffery 2000. Maastrichtian and Palaeocene echinoids: a key to world faunas. Special Papers in Palaeontology 63, 1-404.