Austroclavus glaber

Austroclavus glaber
Temporal range: middle Miocene
Holotype from Auckland War Memorial Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Mollusca
Class: Gastropoda
Subclass: Caenogastropoda
Order: Neogastropoda
Family: incertae sedis
Genus: †Austroclavus
Species:
†A. glaber
Binomial name
†Austroclavus glaber
Powell, 1944
Synonyms
  • † Austroclavus brevicaudalis A. W. B. Powell, 1944
  • † Austroclavus lygdinopsis A. W. B. Powell, 1944
  • † Austroclavus teres A. W. B. Powell, 1944

Austroclavus glaber is an extinct species of sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusc in the superfamily Conoidea, currently not assigned to a family. Fossils of the species date to the middle Miocene, and have been found in the strata of the Otway Basin and Port Phillip Basin of Victoria, Australia.

Description

In the original description, Powell described the species as follows:

Slender, attenuated spired, smooth and polished; whorls weakly angulate above the middle. Protoconch smooth, conical, of 2½ whorls, with a small tip, ending abruptly in a thin "Sinusigera" varix. Post-nuclear sculpture of weak, very oblique, axial folds, 13 per whorl, strongest on the early whorls and obsolete after the fifth whorl. Spiral sculpture restricted to about 24 weak threads on the anterior canal. Outer lip tilted forwards in an arcuate sweep, deeply excavated above by the rounded shoulder sinus and indented below by a pronounced "Stromboid"-notch. There is a strong parietal callus-pad. Canal moderately long, unnotched.

The holotype of the species measures 12.25 mm (0.482 in) in height and 4.6 mm (0.18 in) in diameter.

Taxonomy

The species was first described by A.W.B. Powell in 1944. The holotype was collected from Fossil Beach, Balcombe Bay, Victoria, Australia, at an unknown date prior to 1944, and is held by the Auckland War Memorial Museum. In 2024, Thomas A. Darragh synonymised A. brevicaudalis, A. lygdinopsis and A. teres with A. glaber, as junior subjective synonyms.

Distribution

This extinct marine species dates to the middle Miocene, and occurs in the strata of the Otway Basin of South Australia and Victoria, and the Port Phillip Basin of Victoria, including the Muddy Creek Formation, Gellibrand Formation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Austroclavus glaber A. W. B. Powell, 1944 †. 13 November 2025. Retrieved through: World Register of Marine Species.
  2. 1 2 3 Powell, Arthur William Baden (1944). "The Australian Tertiary Mollusca of the Family Turridae". Records of the Auckland Institute and Museum. 3: 3–68. JSTOR 42905993. Wikidata Q58676624.
  3. 1 2 Blom, Wilma Maija (2025). "Annotated Catalogue of Fossil and Extant Molluscan Types in the Auckland War Memorial Museum". Bulletin of the Auckland Museum. 22. doi:10.32912/bulletin/22. OCLC 1550165130. Wikidata Q135397912.
  4. ↑ "Austroclavus glaber". Collections Online. Auckland War Memorial Museum. Retrieved 13 November 2025.
  5. 1 2 Darragh, Thomas Alwynne (2024). "A checklist of Australian marine Cenozoic Mollusca". Memoirs of Museum Victoria. 83: 37–206. doi:10.24199/j.mmv.2024.83.02. Wikidata Q136396722.

Further reading