''Oenopota impressa'' is a species of

sea snail Sea snail is a common name for slow-moving marine gastropod molluscs, usually with visible external shells, such as whelk or abalone. They share the taxonomic class Gastropoda with slugs, which are distinguished from snails primarily by the ...

, a marine

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

mollusk Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is e ...

in the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Mangeliidae Mangeliidae is a monophyletic family of small to medium-sized, predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea. Bouchet, P. (2011). Mangeliidae P. Fischer, 1883. In: MolluscaBase (2016). Accessed through: World Regis ...

. ''Pleurotoma impressa'' Mørch, 1869 is the type species of ''Nodotoma'' Bartsch, 1941

Description

The length of the shell varies between 6 mm and 14 mm. The wide shell has a short

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

and sloping but rather well-defined shoulder. It is densely costulate longitudinally, crossed by about ten spiral riblets, forming a cancellated surface. Its color is a yellowish ash.G.W. Tryon (1884) Manual of Conchology, structural and systematic, with illustrations of the species, vol. VI; Philadelphia, Academy of Natural Sciences

Distribution

This species occurs in European waters and in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (

Spitzbergen Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

, Nova Zembla); in the Arctic Ocean, near the Seahorse Islands, south to the

Aleutians The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a chain of 14 large vo ...

and eastward to St. Paul, Kodiak Island, Alaska.

References

* Mørch, Moll. Spitzb., No. 31 ; Ann. Soc. Mal. Belg., iv, 21, 1869 * Brunel, P., L. Bosse, and G. Lamarche. 1998. ''Catalogue of the marine invertebrates of the estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence''. Canadian Special Publication of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 126. 405 p. * Gofas, S.; Le Renard, J.; Bouchet, P. (2001). Mollusca, in: Costello, M.J. et al. (Ed.) (2001). ''European register of marine species: a check-list of the marine species in Europe and a bibliography of guides to their identification.'' Collection Patrimoines Naturels, 50: pp. 180–213

External links

Dall (1919) Descriptions of new species of Mollusca from the North Pacific Ocean; Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum, vol. 56 (1920)

Verrill A. E. (1880–1881). Notice of recent addition to the marine Invertebrata of the northeastern coast of America, with descriptions of new genera and species and critical remarks on others. Part II - Mollusca, with notes on Annelida, Echinodermata, etc, collected by the United States Fish Commission. Proceedings of the United States National Museum, 3: 356–409

Tucker, J.K. 2004 ''Catalog of recent and fossil turrids (Mollusca: Gastropoda)''. Zootaxa 682:1–1295.
*
Biolib.cz: ''Oenopota impressa''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oenopota Impressa impressa Gastropods described in 1869