Lepidochitonidae Iredale, 1914

Family Lepidochitonidae Iredale, 1914

Genus Lepidochitona Gray, 1821 View in CoL

Type species. Chiton marginatus Pennant, 1777 (= Chiton cinereus Linnaeus, 1767 ), by monotypy.

Distribution. Lepidochitona is known from the Eocene to the Recent, with a present distribution in five areas: the Black and Mediterranean seas and the north-east Atlantic Ocean from Morocco to north Norway, the Red Sea and north Arabian Sea, off South Africa, the Caribbean Sea and adjacent waters of the Atlantic Ocean, eastern part of the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Alaska Bay ( Kaas & Van Belle 1985b; Sirenko et al. 2013). The fossil record includes Eocene of France, U.K., Ukraine and Hungary ( Bielokrys 1999; Dell’Angelo et al. 2011, 2015b; Dulai et al. 2017), upper Eocene or lower Oligocene of Washington, U.S.A. ( Dell’Angelo et al. 2011), Oligocene of France, Germany, U.S.A. ( Washington) and Canada ( Janssen 1978; Dell’Angelo et al. 2019 b, 2020b), and Miocene-Pleistocene of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin ( Garilli et al. 2005; Studencka & Dulai 2010; Dell’Angelo et al. 2013, 2016, 2018b).

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Remarks. The genus Lepidochitona is well represented in the Paleogene and Neogene of Europe. The comparative analysis of these fossil species is usually hampered by the poor or incomplete descriptions available for many nominal taxa attributed to this genus; furthermore, a SEM-documentation of the ornamentation to unravel diagnostic details of their microsculpture is often lacking, and original descriptions are usually quite generic to allow a robust taxonomic identification.

The genus Lepidochitona houses the greater number of species for any single genus treated in this study, 29 in all; to best facilitate their identification, we have grouped them by source area.