Cuphotifer, Piette, 1876

Cuphotifer ? sp.

( Fig. 75 View Figs 67–83 )

Material – Single specimen with re-crystallised shell, without earliest and latest whorls.

Measurements – Inv. No.: BHU 2029I 308; H dam. = 3.5 mm.

Description – The remnants indicate a turriculate shell, consisting of convex whorls; the highest line of the convexity is at about the abapical third of the distance between the sutures; this line corresponds to the periphery. Impressed suture separates the whorls. Abapically, a ribbon-like spiral elevation accompanies the suture together with a narrow, shallow concavity below it.

The earliest preserved whorl bears sparse, nearly suture to suture, sharpened node-like, collabral riblets, which gradually shorten during the growth and become a row of dome-like true nodes along the top of convexity of the last whorls.

The growth lines are opisthocyrt and slightly opisthocline.

Remarks – This shell clearly indicates a species that is different from the coeval ones, however, the preservation does not permit more accurate identification. Similarly arranged ornament, riblets on early whorls that alter into peripheral nodes on more or less turriculate shell with opisthocyrt growth lines, occurs in some stromboidean genera like Aporrhais , Cuphotifer , Trietteia , etc. Since Cuphotifer (= Pietteia ) species have been already found in the Middle Jurassic faunas of Kachchh ( JAITLY & SZABÓ 2007), tentatively this genus name is given now. By BANDEL (2007, p. 102), Pietteia Cossmann, 1904 is a junior synonym of Cuphotifer .

Occurrence – Habo Dome, Patcham Formation, Callovian.