Vaughanites Woodring, 1928

Kantor, Yuri, Lozouet, Pierre, Puillandre, Nicolas & Bouchet, Philippe, 2014, Lost and found: The Eocene family Pyramimitridae (Neogastropoda) discovered in the Recent fauna of the Indo-Pacific, Zootaxa 3754 (3), pp. 239-276 : 273-274

Vaughanites Woodring, 1928

Vaughanites leptus Woodring, 1928 Miocene , Jamaica.

Vaughanites ? superstes new species Philippines and Papua New Guinea, 318– 389 m.

Until the present paper, the family would have been thought to be restricted to Eocene-Miocene fossils. However, based on the number of known fossil (8) and Recent (11) species, it is clear that we are not merely dealing with the survivors of a once diversified family. Indeed, the Recent fauna is richer than the fossil ones and it had merely been overlooked. This can be explained by their occurrence in relatively deep water, their scarcity, and their rather non-descript "small turrid" appearance which makes them look like one of thousands of undescribed turrid species. Additional new Recent and fossil species may already be lying buried in the collections of deepwater unsorted turrids in museums.

Among the fossils, the extinct genera Pyramimitra and Endiatoma originate from shallow water deposits, and the Lower Eocene Endiatoma represents the oldest occurrence of the family. Conversely, the two fossil Hortia from the Upper Eocene and the Upper Oligocene come from offshore, upper bathyal deposits ( Lozouet 2004).

All fossil Pyramimitridae have a multispiral protoconch of 2.5–3.5 whorls, indicating planktotrophic larval development. Sculpture of axial ribs, appearing on the second or third whorl, is reminiscent of that observed in modern (and fossil) planktotrophic species of Fasciolariidae . By contrast, all but two Recent species possess a large, bulbous, paucispiral protoconch, indicating non-planktotrophic development that may be correlated with narrow geographical ranges. The exceptions are Teremitra efatensis and Vaughanites ? superstes that have a multispiral protoconch and broad distributions extending from the Philippines to Fiji, and the Philippines to Papua New Guinea, respectively.