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The Echinoid Directory

Lophopygus Pomel, 1883, p. 57

Diagnostic Features
  • Test subovate, of small to medium size, broad with greatest width posterior to centre; oral surface slightly sunken towards the peristome.
  • Apical system slightly anterior, tetrabasal, with four gonopores, posterior oculars elongate but not reaching periproct, no catenal plating (advanced form).
  • Petals small, parallel, open, extending only half way to ambitus, inner pore round, outer pore slightly elongated transversely; all ambulacral plates with double pores.
  • Periproct aboral, opening into anal sulcus that extends to the posterior margin.
  • Peristome anterior, pentagonal, depressed, wider than high.
  • Bourrelets absent.
  • Phyllodes slightly widened, double pored, with an inner and an outer series of rounded pores in each half ambulacrum.
  • No buccal pores.
  • No naked zone in posterior interambulacrum orally.
Distribution
Upper Cretaceous (Cenomanian) western Europe.
Name gender masculine
Type
Nucleolites cordatus Goldfuss, 1826, p. 441; by subsequent designation of Kier, 1962, p. 63. Cotteau (1853-1855) gives three figures (plate 957, figs 7-9) of the type species L. cordatus (Goldfuss, 1826).
Species Included
  • Only the type species.
Classification and/or Status

Irregularia; Neognathostomata; 'nucleolitid'.

Monotypic; subjective junior synonym of Nucleolites Lamarck, 1801.
Remarks

Cotteau (1853-1855) gives three figures (plate 957, figs 7-9) of the type species L. cordatus (Goldfuss, 1826). These show the anal sulcus extending to the apical disc. Pomel (1883, p. 57) diagnosed this species as having a long anal sulcus approaching the apex, and a posterior indentation, presumably based on Cotteau's drawings. A specimen labeled as Cenomanian of Essen in the collections of the Natural History Museum, however, shows the anal sulcus separated from the apical disc. Tentatively we treat this as a junior subjective synonym of Nucleolites rather than Holcoepygus.

G. Cotteau. 1853-1855. Paleontologie francaise ou description de fossiles de la France. Terrain Cretace. Tome VI. Echinoidea. G. Masson, Paris. 599 pp., pls. 800-1006.

Pomel, A. 1883. Classification méthodique et Genera des Échinides vivante et fossiles. Thèses présentées a la Faculté des Sciences de Paris pour obtenir le Grade de Docteur ès Sciences Naturelles 503, Aldolphe Jourdan, Alger, 131 pp.