The Echinoid Directory

• Test subglobular; ambitus rounded.
• Apical disc small, dicyclic and not firmly bound to corona.
• Ambulacra straight and tapering adorally and adapically.
• Ambulacral plating trigeminate with middle plate largest and upper plate very much reduced and not reaching the perradius. In larger individuals both upper and lower elements small and restricted to adradial margin.
• Pore-pairs uniserial, arranged in very slightly inclined triads, in small individuals. Forming more strongly oblique triads in larger individuals.
• Ambulacral plates with two subequal tubercles to each compound plate.
• Interambulacral plates much wider than tall. No clear primary tubercle differentiated; plate bearing four or five small subequal tubercles that are rather scattered over the plate. These tubercles reduce in number and become organized into rows adorally. Remainder of plate with sparse granulation only.
• Primary tubercles perforate and crenulate, but because of their small size and poor preservation, often appear non-crenulate.
• Peristome moderate in size and with pronounced, rather rounded buccal notches.
• Lantern, perignathic girdle and spines unknown.

Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian); southern Europe, Africa (Niger, Nigeria), USA and Brazil.

Echinus olisiponensis Forbes, in Sharpe 1850, p. 196, by original designation.

• M. olisiponensis (Forbes, in Sharpe, 1850); Cenomanian, southern Europe, Africa (Niger, Nigeria) and Brazil.

Carinacea, Echinacea, unnamed family (pedinopsids)

Monotypic; subjective junior synonym of Cottaldia Desor, 1856.

Close to Cottaldia, from which it differs in having sparser tuberculation and in having more plates in which one or two elements in each triad are reduced to demiplates. Previously this taxon has been placed in the Pedinidae. However, when well preserved, the larger adoral tubercles are distinctly crenulate, as reported by Smith & Bengston (1991).

Cotteau, G. H. 1862-1867. Paléontologie Française. Terrain Crétace, Tome Septième. Échinides.  V. Masson et fils, Paris. [part published January, 1867]

Forbes, E. in Sharpe, D. 1850. Description of fossil Echinidae from Portugal. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society London 6, 195-199, pl. 25.

Smith, A. B. & Bengston, P. 1991. Cretaceous echinoids from north-eastern Brazil. Fossils and Strata 31, 1-88.