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Petaloconchus sculpturatus alaminatus, a new Pliocene subspecies of vermetid gastropods lacking its defining generic character, with comments on vermetid systematics in general

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Stephen Jay Gould
Stephen Jay Gould*
Affiliation:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
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Abstract

The systematics of vermetid gastropods is in a shambles, with few genera defined by valid autapomorphic characters. Heretofore, the genus Petaloconchus has been included among the few adequately characterized groups, thanks to possession of a double internal lamina on the middle whorls. Yet abundant anecdotal information has been available for 100 years on the absence of laminae in high percentages of individuals within samples, and in entire populations that must be placed within the genealogical nexus of Petaloconchus. I demonstrate that such a nonlaminate population exists within the very material used to define the type species of the genus, Pliocene Petaloconchus sculpturatus Lea, 1843, from the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plain of the United States. I use X-radiography and multivariate biometry to show that this population from the Pliocene Jackson Bluff Formation at Jackson Bluff, Florida, is fully alaminate, but otherwise indistinguishable from P. sculpturatus. After considering a range of solutions, I name this population as a new subspecies, Petaloconchus sculpturatus alaminatus. I discuss theoretical and practical issues arising from populations that lack the defining feature of their genus.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 68 , Issue 5 , September 1994 , pp. 1025 - 1036
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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