Optoturris


Optoturris is an extinct genus of sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea, currently unassigned to a family. First occurring in the Eocene, the genus is known to have lived until at least the Middle Miocene. Three of the species are found in Miocene fossil beds of Australia, with other fossils being found in eastern Russia and Japan.

Description

In the original description, Powell described the genus as below:

Taxonomy

Optoturris was first described by Baden Powell in 1944, who named Pleurotoma optata as the type species. Three of the known species date to the Miocene era of Australia. These were joined by O. kyushuensis in 1961, a fossil species from the Lower Pliocene in Japan. Formerly part of the family Turridae, the genus was excluded from the family by Yu I Kantor et al. in 2024, who kept the genus within the superfamily Conoidea.

Distribution

The earliest known specimens are found in Eocene and Miocene fossil beds of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. O. kyushuensis dates to the lower Takanabe member, with the holotype being found at Kizukume Hill, Shintomi, Miyazaki in Kyushu, Japan. The remaining three species are found in Australia, and date to the Miocene: O. paracantha from the Bass Basin dating to the early Miocene, and both O. optatus and O. edita dating to the middle Miocene of the Port Phillip Basin, Victoria, Australia.

Species

Species within the genus Optoturris include: