Turritella cf. T. altilira

Hi Mike! I have been staring at hundreds of specimens *similar to this one* over the past month and I'm not confident that this form has been described before. Anonymous collections staff have labeled them as T. apicalis (WRONG) or occasionally as T. perattenuata (LOOKS WRONG AT FIRST). As you probably know, all previously described subspecies of T. perattenuata have very long, very thin shells with relatively minor differences in cord pattern, prominence, and relative placement on the whorls. This shell here has remarkably similar cord morphology to some forms of T. perattenuata but has a wider pleural angle. Anyways, I don't have an answer yet but I plan to address this morphotype in a manuscript to be submitted for publication this fall. Thanks for sharing your images!

On 8/4/2021 at 4:24 PM, Clementine said:

Hi Mike! I have been staring at hundreds of specimens *similar to this one* over the past month and I'm not confident that this form has been described before. Anonymous collections staff have labeled them as T. apicalis (WRONG) or occasionally as T. perattenuata (LOOKS WRONG AT FIRST). As you probably know, all previously described subspecies of T. perattenuata have very long, very thin shells with relatively minor differences in cord pattern, prominence, and relative placement on the whorls. This shell here has remarkably similar cord morphology to some forms of T. perattenuata but has a wider pleural angle. Anyways, I don't have an answer yet but I plan to address this morphotype in a manuscript to be submitted for publication this fall. Thanks for sharing your images!

Exactly!!!  I have always thought as much for the same reason.  Petuch has persistently called this terebriformis which shows how little he researches his assessments.   Conrad (1863) named but didn't describe terebriformis.  According to Dall (1892), G.D. Harris found the type for Dall who used the name for a Chipola Turritellid.  Martin (1904) assigned terebriformis to alticostata and later Gardner (1947) assigned Dall's Chipola species to T. dalli.  I pointed this out to Ed who refuses to discuss it which really surprises me due to his proclivity to name new species.  I put cf. T. altilira based on Lyle Campbell's 1993 list which has this as a Tamiami species.  Researching T. altilira I assumed that this species is what Campbell was referring to.