Cavineptunea Powell 1951

“Genus Cavineptunea n.gen.

Type : Cavineptunea monstrosa n.sp.

This genus is provided for a Neptunea-like shell with a remarkable protoconch, quite unlike any other I have seen. It is large, like a tall, spirally wound collar, and surrounds a deep apical cavity. The nucleus is small and central, and the spiral collar emerges from it with rapidly increasing whorls. The effect is definitely neither the result of erosion nor the loss of a prior horny envelope. A juvenile in a perfectly non-eroded state has a protoconch of exactly the same form. The operculum is irregularly ovate with a blunt terminal nucleus, and the radula consists of a tricuspid central tooth and three or four cusps on the laterals. A similar abnormality is shown in Troschel & Thiele's figure of the radula of N. bulbacea (1868, pl. 6, fig. 16) which has three cusps on one lateral and four on the other. Un­fortunately, I was able to prepare only one radula mount, so the normal number of lateral cusps is in doubt.

The shell is tall-spired, with a short, twisted canal and an angulate periphery.

It is difficult to determine whether Cavineptunea is an Antarctic relative of the Neptuniidae or simply another example of the adaptive radiation so marked in the Cominellid-Buccinuloid assemblage of the southern regions, but the latter supposition is the more likely. Unfortunately, the only available animal was not well enough preserved to do more than examine the dentition.”

(Powell, 1951: 145)

Cavineptunea is een geslacht van weekdieren uit de klasse van de Gastropoda (slakken).