The Echinoid Directory

• Test subglobular, flattened below, gently domed above.
• Apical disc small, dicyclic; plates firmly bound to corona. Genital plates hexagonal, with gonopore towards interradial point; ocular plates small and pentagonal, strongly insert. All plates covered only in fine granules. Periproct small, subcircular to subpentagonal.
• Ambulacra straight; pore-pairs uniserial except adorally where they expand to form short phyllodes. Aboral pore-pairs with the two pores widely separated but without linking groove (subconjugate). Adoral pore-pairs smaller and more oblique.
• Ambulacral plating trigeminate throughout; plates with single large element that forms most of plate plus two small demiplates; the largest element is the lowest of the three.
• Interambulacral plates wide.
• Tuberculation: aboral surface to ambitus without primary tubercles; plates covered in coarse peg-like granules in both ambulacral and interambulacral zones. Primary tubercles developing subambitally; a single series in the ambulacral and interambulacral zones, where they define an arcuate submarginal band. Primary tubercles imperforate and non-crenulate, with relatively large mamelon and poorly defined platform.
• Peristome subcircular, with only the feeblest of buccal notches and no tag.
• Spines and lantern unknown.

Lower Cretaceous (Aptian), Europe.

Codiopsis alpina Gras, 1852, by original designation.

• Only the type species.

Euechinoidea, Arbacioida, Arbaciidae.

Subjective junior synonym of Codiopsis (Hemicodiopsis)  Pomel, 1883.

Valette (1906) established this genus for Codiopsis with four-geminate compound ambulacra. However, this was apparently an error as ambulacral plating in the type species is trigeminate, very much as Codiopsis doma.

Mortensen, T. 1935. A monograph of the Echinoidea II. Bothriocidaroida, Melonechinoida, Lepidocentroida and Stirodonta. C. A. Reitzel, Copenhagen.

Valette, D. A. 1906. Etude sur la formule porifere d\'un certain nombre d\'Echinides reguliers. Bulletin de la Societe Scientifique d'Histoire Naturelle de l'Yonne 59, 1-41.

The figures need to be uploaded. [Andrew Smith, September 2006]