The Echinoid Directory

• Test ovate with shallow anterior sulcus; posterior face truncate. Test depressed in profile.
• Apical disc with four gonopores; ethmolytic.
• Anterior ambulacrum weakly sunken aborally; pore-pairs small and rudimentary.
• Paired ambulacra petaloid; petals subparallel, open distally; extending almost to ambitus. Moderately wide interporal zone. Petals flush to very slightly indented.
• Oral surface not preserved.
• Periproct on posterior truncate face; large (the transverse appearance stressed by Checchia-Rispoli is due to crushing of the test).
• Peripetalous fasciole present.
• Aboral tuberculation heterogeneous.

Lower Eocene, Egypt.

Macropneustes fischeri de Loriol, 1881, p. 74, by original designation.

• Only the type species.

Spatangoida, Micrasterina, Macropneustidae.

Monotypic; Objective junior synonym of Fourtaunia Lambert, 1902; subjective junior synonym of  Megapneustes Gauthier, 1899.

Checchia-Rispoli (1941) established this taxon on the basis of de Loriol\'s original figures of the species. He differentiated it by its more depressed profile and transverse periproct.

Roman & Strougo (1994) refigured and described the type specimen of fisheri along with other material from the same locality. The type specimen is crushed and does not show the oral surface, with the periproct longitudinal, not transverse as originally described. They showed that the type species of Fourtaunia was synonymous with de Loriol\'s Macropneustes fischeri. Thebaster thus becomes an objective synonym of Fourtaunia. They in error treat Fourtaunia as a junior synonym of Pharaonaster.

Roman, J. & Struogo, A. 1994. Echinoides du Libyen (Eocene inferieur) d\'Egypt. Revue de paleobiologie 13, 29-57.