Diagnostic Features
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Apical disc hemicyclic, without suranal plate in adults.
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Ambulacral plating trigeminate, with pore-pairs in three distinct columns throughout, these columns being separated by bands of tubercles (juveniles have simple arcs of pore-pairs).
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Primary tubercle on every third or fourth ambulacral plate only.
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Interambulacra with small primary tubercle on most but not all plates; secondary tubercles sparse and not regularly developed; plates appear rather naked.
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Adapical interradial and perradial zones devoid of tubercles.
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Buccal notches sharp and pronounced.
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Auricles joined perradially.
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Distribution
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Miocene to Recent, Caribbean, West coast of America, including Galapagos Islands, Southern Europe, Mediterranean and North Africa, and throughout the Indo-Pacific.
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Name gender |
feminine |
Type |
Tripneustes ventricosus (Lamarck, 1816) by monotypy.
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Species Included |
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T. ventricosus (Lamarck, 1816); Recent, Caribbean and Atlantic - littoral to 30 m.
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T. depressus A. Agassiz, 1863; Recent, Gulf of California, West Coast of Mexico, Galapagos Islands and Clarion Island.
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T. gratilla (Linneus, 1758); Recent; Indo-Pacific- littoral to 75 m (with subspecies - see Dafni 1983). [Tripneustes fuscus Michelin, 1865 is a junior synonym]
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T. antiquus Duncan & Sladen, 1855; Miocene of Pakistan.
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T. proavia Duncan & Sladen, 1855; Miocene of Pakistan.
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T. parkinsoni L. Agassiz, Miocene of southern France.
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T. gahardensis (Seunes); middle and late Miocene of France and Spain.
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T. Schneideri Boehm, Miocene **
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T. tobleri Jeannet, 1928; Miocene of Venezuela.
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T. californicus Kew, 1920; Pliocene of California.
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Classification and/or Status |
Camarodonta; Echinoida; Toxopneustidae.
Monophyletic.
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Remarks |
The ambulacral structure, combined with the rather deep and sharp buccal notches make this readily identifiable in the fossil record. Only Toxopneustes has similar vertical pore-pair series and deep buccal notches, but in that species there are multiple subequal tubercles on interambulacral plates. Lytechinus tests are rather similar in tuberculation style but have a very different ambulacral pore-pair arrangement.
Mortensen, T. (1943) A monograph of the Echinoidea Part III.2, Camarodonta 1. C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen.
Dafni, J. (1983) A new sub-species of Tripneustes gratilla (L.) from the northern Red Sea (Echinodermata: Echinoidea: Toxopneustidae).Israeli Journal of Zoology 32:1-12.
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