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The Echinoid Directory

Temnopleurus L. Agassiz, 1841, p. 7

[= Prymnechinus Koehler, 1927, p. 109, type species P. proctalis Koehler, 1927; = Toreumatica Gray, 1855, p. 39, type species T. reevesii Gray, 1855; = Coptopleura Ikeda 1940, p. 92, type species C. sema Ikeda, 1940 (=Toreumatica reevesii Gray, 1855); = Coptopleura Ikeda, 1940, p. 92, type species Coptopleura sema Ikeda, 1940 (=Toreumatica reevesii Gray, 1855)]

Diagnostic Features
  • Test medium-sized; profile low domal to subconical; rather thick-shelled
  • Apical disc dicyclic (rarely with ocular 1 exsert); periproct subcircular with excentric opening and some larger periproctal plates. Genital plates with tubercles forming a ring around the periproct.
  • Ambulacral plating trigeminate. Pore-pairs arranged in near vertical arcs forming a single adradial band. One primary tubercle to each compound plate close to pore zone plus a smaller perradial tubercle.
  • Interambulacral plates with central primary tubercle and smaller secondary tubercles on either side. Smaller secondaries and miliaries over the remainder of the plate.
  • Primary tubercles imperforate and distinctly crenulate.
  • Large wedge-shaped pits along horizontal interambulacral sutures on either side of the primary tubercle extending in from triple suture junctions. Smaller triangular pits at ambulacral triple suture junctions down the perradius.
  • Peristomial small with very feeble buccal notches.
  • Spines short and simple.
  • Lantern camarodont.
Distribution
Recent; Indo-West Pacific.
Name gender masculine
Type
Cidaris toreumatica Leske, 1778, p. 155, by original designation
Species Included
  • T. toreumaticus (Leske, 1778); Pliocene to recent, Indo-West Pacific.
  • T. apodus (Agassiz & Clark, 1906); Recent, Indo-West Pacific.
  • T. alexandri (Bell, 1884); recent, Australia and Malay archipelago.
  • T. decipiens (de Meijere, 1904); recent, Indo-West Pacific
  • T. hardwickii (Gray, 1855); Recent, China Sea and Japan.
  • T. michaelsoni (Doderlein, 1914); Recent, Australia.
  • T. reevesii (Gray, 1855); Recent, Indo-Pacific.
Classification and/or Status
Euechinoidea; Camarodonta; Temnopleuroida; Temnopleuridae.
Remarks

Distinguished from other coarsely ornamented temnopleurids by having obviously crenulate tubercles. Mortensen (1943) recognized Toreumatica as a subgenus for a subset of species with a highly eccentric periproct opening.

Mortensen, T. (1943) A monograph of the Echinoidea Part III.2, Camarodonta 1. C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen.