The Echinoid Directory

Polysalenia Mortensen, 1932, p. 490

Diagnostic Features
  • Apical disc small and weakly raised above the corona; with indented sutures and prominent sutural pits.
  • Periproct displaced towards ambulacrum I. Single suranal plate incorporated into disc.
  • Distinct ring of small tubercles along the inner margin of genital plates surrounding the periproct.
  • Hydropores scattered over the entire surface of genital plate 2.
  • Ambulacral plating trigeminate aborally and polygeminate adorally, where ambulacra expand to form distinct phyllodes.
  • Ambulacral tubercles imperforate; interambulacral tubercles mostly imperforate but adapical ones with small rudimentary perforation.
Distribution
Late Cretaceous (Campanian), Sweden.
Name gender feminine
Type
Polysalenia notabilis Mortensen, 1932, by original designation.
Species Included
  • P. notabilis Mortensen, 1932; Campanian, Sweden.
  • P. cottaldi Mortensen, 1932; Campanian, Sweden.
Classification and/or Status

Calycina, Salenioida; stem group Saleniidae.

Probably monophyletic.

Remarks

Differs from Heterosalenia in having polyporous adoral ambulacral plating, slightly more rudimentary perforation of interambulacral tubercles and adapical interambulacral plates that lack a primary tubercle. Distinguished from Novasalenia, which also lacks aboral interambulacral tubercles, by its aboral trigeminate plate compounding; Novasalenia has strictly bigeminate plating.

Vadet (1999, p. 78) made Polysalenia the type of the family Pseudosaleniidae, and included here also Prosalenia and Heterosalenia. This encompassed all salenioids with a single suranal plate and perforate tubercles, a grade taxon.

Mortensen, T. 1932. On the Salenidae of the Upper Cretaceous deposits of Scania, southern Sweden. Geologiska Foreningen i Stockholm Forhandlingar 54, 471-497.

Vadet, A. 1999. La Classification des oursins reguliers du Lias et du Jura. Bulletin de la Societe academique du Boulonnais 4(3), 70-83.