The Echinoid Directory

• Test of medium size, oval to subcircular, moderately inflated.
• Apical system monobasal, with four gonopores.
• Petals short, broad, open, tapering distally. Pores strongly conjugate, inner pores circular, outer pores elongated transversely; all ambulacral plates beyond petals with single pores.
• Peristome pentagonal, anterior, wider than long.
• Periproct supramarginal, longitudinal.
• Bourrelets strongly developed, greatly inflated, tooth-like; basicoronal plates longer than wide.
• Phyllodes simple, single pored, with an outer series in each half- ambulacrum, plus one or two insert pores distally.
• Buccal pores present.
• Tubercles larger adorally than adapically, with a broad naked sternal zone in interambulacrum 5.

Upper Eocene of Australia.

Cassidulus longianus Gregory, 1890, p. 482; by original designation.

• A. longianus (Gregory, 1890); Upper Eocene, Australia
• A. florescens (Gregory, 1892); Late Oligocene-Early Miocene, Australia.

Irregularia; Cassiduloida; Faujasiidae; Stigmatopyginae

Lambert & Thiery (1909-1925) refer four other species to this genus. Kier (1962, p. 151) states that Gabb\'s Cassidulus micrococcus is a Hardouinia, while Stoliczka (1873, p. 31) describes Cassidulus crassus and Cassidulus emys as having tetrabasal apical systems, and thus should not be referred to Australanthus. Kier (1962) reports that he has not seen the fourth species, Cotteau\'s Cassidulus munieri, and hesitates referring it to this genus without knowing its phyllode structure.

Australanthus is similar to Petalobrissus in having a supramarginal periproct in a longitudinal anal sulcus, with bowed petals (slightly more parallel in Australanthus) that taper distally, and where the posterior petals are longer than the lateral petals. Australanthus differs from Petalobrissus in having a monobasal apical system (tetrabasal in Petalobrissus), more tooth-like, projecting bourrelets, and phyllodes with fewer pores (forming a single, not a double series in each half ambulacrum).

Bittner, A. 1892 [May] S. B. Akad. Wien. CI (i), p. 350.

P. M. Kier. 1962. Revision of the cassiduloid echinoids. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 144 (3) 262 pp.

J. Lambert & P. Thiery. 1909-1925. Essai de nomenclature raisonnee des echinides. Libraire Septime Ferriere, Chaumont, 607 pp., 15 pls.

F. Stoliczka. 1873. The Cretaceous fauna of southern India, the Echinodermata. Memoires of the Geological Society of India, series 8, 4, (3), 59 pp., 7 pls.