Amauropsina Bayle

Caze, Bruno, Merle, Didier, Meur, Mathieu Le, Pacaud, Jean-Michel, Ledon, Daniel & Martin, Jean-Paul Saint, 2011, Taxonomic implications of the residual colour patterns of ampullinid gastropods and their contribution to the discrimination from naticids, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56 (2), pp. 329-347 : 343

Genus Amauropsina Bayle in Chelot, 1885

Type species: Ampullaria canaliculata Lamarck, 1804 , Grignon, Lutetian.

Description.—The two Palaeogene species of this genus ( SOM 1, 2) display various morphologies of the colour pattern varying from fluorescent patches more or less regularly positioned on a darker background to axial fluorescent segments formed by coalescence of these patches.

Remarks.—The morphology of the species of Amauropsina (elevated and acuminate spire, large umbilicus without sheath, narrow columellar edge somewhat reflected and, in the type species a narrowly canaliculated suture) is not representative of the Naticidae . This rather resembles the shell morphology of the ampullinid genus Ampullonatica (no residual pattern under UV light). However, the colour pattern of A. arenularia is similar to that revealed in Eocene naticids ( Le Meur 2009) and that of A. canaliculata displays sparse small fluorescent patches, unknown from other naticids and even from other ampullinids. Interpretations of the systematic affinity of this genus derived from shell morphology and colour pattern data differ and so the genus Amauropsina remains an enigmatic taxon.