Anatoma richardi NOR

Anatoma richardi (Dautzenberg & H. Fischer, 1896)

Fig. 7A–I

Scissurella richardi Dautzenberg & H. Fischer, 1896: 487; pl. 21 figs 2–3.

Anatoma richardi – Geiger 2012: 1108. — Ortega & Gofas 2019: 518–519.

GALICIA BANK • 1 spm, 32 sh; 42°52′ N, 11°51′ W; 985–1000 m; 20 Oct. 1987; SEAMOUNT 1 DW116; MNHN • 3 spm; 42°49.13′ N, 11°46.59′ W; 903 m; 4 Aug. 2011; BANGAL 0711 GOC6; MNCN.

Ortega & Gofas (2019) used this name for the Anatoma species which is common at depths less than 1000 meters in the Canary Islands, and concluded that the synonymy with Scissurella tenuis Jeffreys, 1877 proposed by Geiger (2012) was not warranted. The latter, with an abyssal type locality in the northwest Atlantic, differs by the configuration of the early whorls and the habitat. Anatoma richardi, originally described from off the Azores Islands in 1360 m, is also found on GB. In A. richardi, the suture of the body whorl may be more or less detached from the selenizone of the previous whorl (the “sutsel” in Geiger 2012), whereas in A. tenuis the suture is reported as always adjusted to it. Anatoma tenuisculpta (Seguenza, 1880), described from the Pleistocene of southern Italy and recorded as living in the Alboran Sea and Ibero-Moroccan Gulf and in several localities off NW Europe (Høisaeter & Geiger 2011; Geiger 2012), also belongs to this species group but is distinguished by having a higher profile with the last whorl even more clearly separated from the selenizone. We have never seen any locality with A. richardi and A. tenuisculpta sympatric and separable, and the possibility that they represent morphological variation in a single species should be investigated. Some specimens from GB (Fig. 7G–I), here reported as A. cf. richardi, are rather stunted with a rather wide sutsel, but could not be convincingly delimited from typical A. richardi.