Barattolites arghadehensis Babazadeh, 2022

Barattolites arghadehensis Babazadeh, 2022

The genus Barattolites Vecchio & Hottinger, 2007 displays a simple exoskeleton characterized by the lack of rafters, and the presence of one intercalary beam between two radial main partitions (beams). Two oblique transverse sections have been provided (Babazadeh, 2022, fig. 8D-E), re-illustrated herein in Fig. 3 View Fig E-F. The therein indicated intercalary beams (ib) belong in our opinion to the main radial partitions (beams), therefore pointing to the genus Coleiconus and excluding Barattolites . In fact, the two mentioned sections might well belong to Coleiconus minimus , namely one section closer to the cone base ( Fig. 3C View Fig ) and the other in the juvenile part ( Fig. 3F View Fig ). The holotype (Babazadeh, 2022, figs. 6C-D), as almost all other specimens (figs. 8A-C, HI) described as axial sections are instead tangential sections. Therefore, the diagram of the basal cone diameter versus ‘axial cone diameter’ (obviously referring to the cone height in axial sections) with discriminatory field against other taxa is meaningless (Babazadeh, 2022, fig. 5B). Tangential sections do not allow the assessment of either the real cone height or the real cone diameter. Therefore, it is just logical that ‘ Barattolites arghadehensis’ displays ‘a smaller size of the test, narrower apical angle’ compared to B. trentinarensis Vecchio & Hottinger, 2007 and B. andhuri Gallardo-Garcia and Serra-Kiel in Serra-Kiel et al. (2016) (Babazadeh, 2022, p. 282). In fact, the tangential sections of ‘ B. arghadehensis ’ can be well related to (sub) axial sections of Daviesiconus mahallatensis Babazadeh ( Fig. 3A View Fig ). In conclusion, we consider B. arghadensis as an invalid species representing a mixture of different taxa.