The Echinoid Directory

Viaudechinus Roman, 1983, p. 4

Diagnostic Features	Test small, flattened above and below with rounded ambitus. Apical disc dimorphic: female with large disc (larger than the peristome) and the apical region sunken to form a marsupium. Inturned adapical plates of corona with fine tuberculation. Male with smaller apical disc that is not sunken. Ambulacra straight, moderately large; trigeminate with compounding in echinid style. Pore-pairs uniserially arranged throughout. Primary tubercle to each compound plate plus 4-5 smaller secondary tubercles. Horizontal sutural pits towards perradius, forming a double series. Interambulacral plates with single central primary tubercle and smaller secondaries on either side and above. Deep elongate or wedge-shaped sutural pits on adradial and interradial sides. Primary tubercles imperforate and non-crenulate. Peristome small, flush, with almost no buccal notches. Spines and lantern unknown.
Distribution	Uppermost Miocene and Pliocene, France.
Name gender	masculine
Type	Dicoptella bigoti Lambert & Thiery, 1911, p. 233, by original designation.
Species Included	Only the type species.
Classification and/or Status	Camarodonta; Temnopleuroida; Temnopleuridae. Monotypic; subjective junior synonym of Coptechinus Cotteau, 1883
Remarks	Distinguished from Temnechinus woodii by its non-crenulate tubercles and the absence of sunken interradial marsupia in the interradii. This taxon differs from Coptechinus only in the relative size of the sutural pits. As ornamentation is so variably developed in temnopleurids, this offers no good basis for generic distinction. Roman, J. 1983. Echinides "marsupiaux" (fam. Temnopleuridae) dans le Neogene de l'Ouest Europeen. Annales de Paleontologie 69, 13-42.