The Echinoid Directory

• Test relatively thick-shelled and tall.
• Apical disc ca. 45% test diameter; plating unknown in type species.
• Interambulacra with >12 plates in a series; plates much wider than tall. Primary tubercles perforate and crenulate. Areoles ovate, incised; becoming confluent adorally.
• Scrobicular tubercles differentiated but not much larger than extrascrobicular tubercles. Extrascrobicular tubercles well developed on adradial and interradial sides; comprising mamelonate tubercles and interspersed granules.
• No sutural pits or incised sutures.
• Ambulacra almost straight. Pore zones weakly incised; pore-pairs conjugate with the two pores widely separated by a low partition about twice as wide as a pore.
• Ambulacral tuberculation uniform from ambitus adapically but with every other plate bearing an enlarged tubercle adorally. One or two secondary tubercles on perradial side of primaries.
• Peristome approximately as wide as apical disc; plating unknown. Perignathic girdle not seen in type species.
• Spines not definitely known attached to test. Possible spines found at same horizon as test long, weakly fusiform with a short collar; shaft ornamented with relatively dense rows of small pointed beads.

Middle Jurassic (Upper Bajocian-Callovian), western Europe.

Cidaris blainvillei Desor, 1858, p. 41, by original designation [= Cidaris blainvillei Agassiz & Desor 1847, p. 28]. [Vadet treated Agassiz & Desor's species as a nomen dubium but in Agassiz & Desor's brief description they refer to specimen V27, making this a valid species designation.] Holotype: Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris J01690.

• P. blainvillei (Desor, 1858); Upper Bajocian - Bathonian, France and Switzerland.
• P. varusensis (Cotteau, 1875); Bajocian, France.

Cidaroida, Polycidaridae.

Subjective junior synonym of Zbindenicidaris Vadet, 1991.

The taxon was described by Vadet (1991). He distinguished it from Nenoticidaris by its supposedly coarser mamelons and from Paracidaris by having more tubercles in a series crenulate. However, the type species of Philicidaris can be distinguished from species previously placed in Nenoticidaris by Vadet, by its uniform ambital and adapical ambulacral tuberculation, a characteristic feature of Zbindenicidaris.

P. desnoyersi (Cotteau, 1875); Callovian, France was originally included in this genus but subsequently synonymised with Nudicidaris sublaevis Cotteau, by Vadet (2004).

Vadet, A. 1991. Revision des "Cidaris" du Lias et du Dogger Europeens. Memoires de la Societe academique du Boulonnais 10, 1-176.

Vadet, A. 2004. Echinides fossiles du Boulonnais. Du Bajocien au Tithonien: les "Cidaris". Annales de la Societe d'Histoire Naturelle du Boulonnais 3, 1-35.