The Echinoid Directory

• Test subglobular with circular outline; posterior face obliquely truncate with subanal projecting heeled.
• Apical disc ethmophract with four gonopores.
• Anterior ambulacrum narrow and sunken adapically. Pore-pairs differentiated and presumably associated with funnel-building tube-feet.
• Petals narrow; sunken with pores elongate and slit-like; closing distally; petals subequal in length; relatively short.
• Peristome indented by labrum.
• Labral plate long, bottle-shaped, almost as long as paired sternal plates. Sternal plates symmetrical.
• Periproct small, circular, near top of posterior sloping face and visible in aboral view.
• ?Peripetalous fasciole present.
• Aboral tuberculation uniform but rather coarse, with little granulation.

Upper Cretaceous (Senonian), North Africa, Antarctica.

Hemiaster verrucosus Coquand, 1862, p.327, by original designation.

• V. verrucosus (Coquand, 1862); "Senonian superieur" (?Campanian), Algeria.
• V. subverrucosus (Gauthier, 1892); "Senonian superieur" (?Campanian), Tunisia.
• V. vomer (Lambert, 1910); Upper Cretaceous, Antactica.

Spatangoida, Hemiasterina, Hemiasteridae.

?Subjective junior synonym of Leiostomaster Lambert, 1920

According to Lambert & Thiery (1924, p. 506) Vomeraster differs from Leiostomaster by having vermiculate granulation developed over its periplastronal zones, tubercles with oblique areoles below the ambitus and most of all by its labiate peristome. The oral surface remains unfigured in the type species and both Leiostomaster and Vomeraster species are known to co-occur. Since the peristome in the Antarctic species V. vomer is no different from that seen in Leistomaster gentili the two genera are treated as synonyms here. It is probable that the differences between the two 'genera' reflect sexual dimorphism.