Ischnochiton Gray, 1847

Dell’Angelo, Bruno, Landau, Bernard M., Sosso, Maurizio & Taviani, Marco, 2020, Late Pleistocene Red Sea Mollusca: 1. Polyplacophora, Zootaxa 4772 (3), pp. 401-449 : 407-408

Genus Ischnochiton Gray, 1847

Type species. Chiton textilis Gray, 1828 , by subsequent designation ( Gray 1847: 168). For synonymy, see Kaas & Van Belle (1990).

Remarks. The diagnosis of subgenera within Ischnochiton is based mainly on girdle characters, not detectable in fossil species.

Distribution. Ischnochiton is one of the most ancient extant genera, with a present-day circumglobal distribution, excluding the northern Atlantic and Arctic Oceans ( Kaas & Van Belle 1990). Beside a questionable record from the Jurassic of Germany ( Ischnochiton marloffsteinensis Fiedel & Keupp, 1988 ), the genus is present in the Eocene of Europe ( England and Ukraine), the upper Eocene-lower Oligocene of Washington, U.S.A. ( Dell’Angelo et al. 2011a), the Miocene to Pleistocene of Europe ( Dell’Angelo et al. 2004, 2015; Garilli et al. 2005; Studencka & Dulai 2010), Africa ( Tanzania, Davis 1954), Australasia ( Ashby & Cotton 1939; Cotton & Godfrey 1940; Beu & Maxwell 1990), Indonesia ( Verbeek et al. 1882), Japan ( Itoigawa et al. 1976) and the U.S.A. ( Berry 1940). Ischnochiton sp. is the only chiton species reported from deep waters (> 400 m) in the Red Sea ( Janssen & Taviani 2015).