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Conus (Contraconus) heilprini (Petuch, 1994)
Description (1): Shell very small for genus, stocky, rotund, very wide across shoulder, with truncated, shortened body whorl and mode-rately-high, pyramidal spire; shoulder sharply-angled, edged with wide, beaded carina; spire whorls heavily coronated; body whorl sculptured with numerous fine spiral threads and with anterior one-third bearing 15-18 large spiral cords; spire whorls slightly concave, canaliculate, ornamented with 2 large, rounded spiral cords; aperture narrow, widening anteriorly.
Holotype: UF66443, Length 33 mm.
Type Locality: Griffin Pit Unit, Griffin Brothers pit, Holey Land area, southwestern Palm Beach County.
Remarks: Contraconus heilprini is the smallest-known member of the genus Contraconus and, along with C. mitchellorum n. sp., was the last-living species of left-handed cone. The new species is most similar to, and is undoubtably the descendant of, the older, stratigraphically-lower C. osceolai Petuch, 1991 (Plate 96, Figures C, E) from the Caloosa-hatchee Fauna, but differs in being amuch smaller, much stockier and truncated shell with a higher, less-canaliculate spire, in having heavily-beaded shoulder carina, and in having strong spiral sculpture on the body whorl. This bizarre little species is a common and charac teristic component of the post-Caloosahatchee Griffin Pit Fauna, and is an index fossil for the Griffin Pit Unit.
Etymology: Named for Prof. Angelo Heilprin, pioneer Floridian paleomalacologist and author of Explorations in the Okeechobee Wilderness (1886-1887), the first publication on the Caloosahatchee Fauna.
Tra tutte le specie di Contraconus è quella di dimensioni minori. Per Hendricks, il Contraconus heilprini è un sinonimo del Contraconus adversarius, ma molto probabilmente Hendricks non considera in modo approfondito le differenze relative alle epoche in cui sono vissuti.
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Bibliografia Consultata
(1) - Petuch, E. J., 1994. Atlas of Florida Fossil Shells (Pliocene and Pliestocene Marine Gastropods).
(2) - Hendricks (2008) “The Genus Conus (Mollusca: Neogastropoda) in the Plio-Pleistocene of the Southeastern United States”
