The Echinoid Directory

• Test of medium size, highly inflated, broad, flat adorally.
• Apical system anterior, monobasal, with four gonopores.
• Petals broad, equal in length, tapering distally but remaining open. Pores strongly conjugate, circular, situated obliquely to each other; ambulacral plates beyond petals with single pores.
• Peristome anterior, pentagonal, slightly wider than long.
• Periproct just inframarginal, oval, with a slight adapical overhang.
• Bourrelets forming a narrow ring around peristome.
• Phyllodes widened, single pored, with pores arranged in three series in each half ambulacrum.
• Buccal pores present.
• Tubercles slightly larger adorally than adapically.
• No naked sternal region.

• Paleocene - Lower Eocene of Pakistan.

Neocatopygus rotundus Duncan & Sladen, 1882, p. 76; by monotypy.

• Only the type species.

Irregularia; Cassiduloida; 'Gitolampadids'.

Neocatopygus is most similar to Gitolampas, but is distinguished by its broader and more highly inflated test (Kier, 1962, p. 204) and by its more developed phyllodes, with a complex outer and inner series.

Neocatopygus is similar to Ilaronia in having 'lip-like' bourrelets that form a ring around the peristome. This character in Neocatopygus is not as developed as in Ilaronia; the two genera being easily distinguished by the position of the periproct, being marginal in Ilaronia and inframarginal in Neocatopygus.

P. M. Duncan & W. P. Sladen. 1882. The fossil Echinoidea from the Ranikot Series of Nummulitic strata in western Sind. Palaeontologica Indica, 14th series 1 (3), 21-100, pls. 5-20

P. M. Kier. 1962. Revision of the cassiduloid echinoids. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 144, (3), 262 pp.