The Echinoid Directory

• Test inflated, ovate with faint anterior sulcus deepening adorally; posterior face obliquely truncate. Test thick-shelled.
• Apical disc ethmophract with four gonopores.
• Frontal ambulacrum shallowly depressed adapically and in a distinct groove adorally. Pore-pairs small and oblique; not differentiated adapically.
• Paired ambulacra subpetaloid to apetaloid; pore-pairs in slight depression; parallel-sided and open distally. Posterior petals shorter than anterior petals.
• Peristome small and circular; angled obliquely to face anteriorly and opening into well defined anterior sulcus.
• Plastron very slender. Labral plate longitudinally elongate; extending to midway down ambulacral plate 2. Sternal plates slightly longer; median suture vertical; subsequent plating biserial.
• Periproct small and towards top of posterior truncate face; opening between plates 4 and 6.
• No peripetalous fasciole.
• Subanal fasciole crossing rear of plates 2a,b on oral side and plates 4a,b adproctally. Two enlarged pore-pairs enclosed on either side by fasciole.
• Aboral tuberculation consisting of small scattered tubercles set in a groundmass of granules.

Upper Cretaceous (Coniacian-Maastrichtian) to Palaeocene (Danian); Europe, former Soviet Union, North Africa, Greenland, Japan.

Ovulaster gauthieri Cotteau, 1884, p. 38 [?=Cardiaster zignoi d'Orbigny, 1854, p. 145], by original designation. Syntype J01494, Museum National d\'Histoire Naturelle, Paris.

• O. zignoi (d'Orbigny, 1854), Late Cretaceous, Italy [?=O. gauthieri Cotteau, 1884].
• O. reticulatus Smith & Gallemi, 1999; Maastrichtian, Spain.
• O. protodecimae Giusberti et al. 2005; Danian, Italy.
• O. auberti Gauthier, 1892; Late Cretaceous, Tunisia.
• Lambert & Thiery list one other species from North Africa that requires restudy.

Spatangoida, Micrasterina, Micrasteridae; Ovulasterinae.

Probably paraphyletic (by exclusion of Habanaster).

Differs from Habanaster in having the posterior interambulacrum continuous to the apex. In Habanaster the two posterior ambulacra meet interradially so that the posterior interambulacrum does not reach the apical disc.

Cotteau, G. H. 1885 (January). Echinides nouveau ou peu connue. Bulletin de la Societe zoologique de France 9, p. 328

Giusberti, L., Fantin, M. & Buckeridge, J. 2005. Ovulaster protodecimae n. sp. (Echinodiea, Spatangoida) and associated epifauna (Cirripedia, Verrucidae) from the Danian of northeastern Italy. Revista Italiana di Paleontologia e stratigrafia 111, 455-465.

Smith, A.B.  J. Gallemi, C.H.Jeffery, G. Ernst & P.D. Ward 1999. Late Cretaceous-early Tertiary echinoids from northern Spain: implications for the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Bulletin of the Natural History Museum, London (Geology Series) 55, 81-137.