Turtoniidae Clarke, 1855

Turtoniidae Clarke, 1855

For a long time, Turtoniidae was regarded as a family of Cyamioidea ( Chavan, 1969; Vokes, 1980; Ponder & de Keyzer, 1998). After studying the anatomy, reproductive biology and shell morphology of Turtonia minuta (Fabricius, 1780) , the type species of the genus on which Turtoniidae is based, Ockelmann (1964) concluded that this species corresponds to Veneroidea. Mikkelsen et al. (2006) found Turtonidae to be placed outside Veneroidea in all morphological studies they performed, but it was consistently shown to be a member of Veneridae in all their molecular studies. Consequently, the authors proposed that it should be considered as a subfamily in Veneridae : Turtoniinae . The molecular studies by Combosch et al. (2017) support its placement in Veneroidea.