150 A. JS. Verrill — Revision Genera and Species of Starfishes. 



Goniaster (Agassiz), Gray (restr.). Type G. cuspidatus Agassiz. 



Goniaster (pars) Agassiz, Prod. Mem. Soc. Neufch., 1836. 



Goniaster Gray, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. vi, p. 280, 1840. Type G. cus- 

 pidatus. Synopsis, p. 10, 1866 (non Perrier, 1876, nee Sladen, 1889). 



Pentagonaster {pars) Perrier, Eevis. , Arch, de ZooL, v, p. 24, 1876. Sladen, 

 Voy. Chall., xxx, p. 264, 1889. 



Astrogonium (pars) Miill. and Trosch., Syst., pp. 52, 56, 1842. 



Phaneraster Perrier, Exp. Sci. Trav. and Talisman, pp. 334, 337, 387, 1894. 

 (Type G. semilunatus = cuspidatus.) 



As already explained, the genus Goniaster was restricted by Gray, 

 in 1840, to a definite and well Jcnown type {G. cuspidatus). Perrier, 

 in 1894, has, quite unnecessarily, applied a new name (Phaneraster) 

 to exactly the same group, with the same type. Whether Goniaster^ 

 as here restricted, is Avorthy of generic separation from the great 

 group called Pentagonaster by Perrier and by Sladen, must remain, 

 for the present, a matter of personal opinion, but if they should be 

 reunited under a single generic name, Goniaster would be the name 

 that ought to be chosen for the whole group, if we are to follow the 

 generally accepted rules of binomial nomenclature. (See above, p. 

 146.) 



The principal character by which the present group has been 

 distinguished is the presence of one or more large, stout conical 

 tubercles or spines on more or less of the dorsal marginal and 

 abactinal plates, in adult specimens ; or of verruciform swellings 

 in the same situations, in the young. In most adults these conical 

 spines form a central group on the disk and five large radial groups, 

 but the number of plates that may bear spines is variable ; sometimes 

 they occur on nearly all the dorsal plates. 



The marginal plates are large, thick, convex, not numerous, and 

 usually naked, except for one or two marginal series of granules, but 

 they are more or less granulous over the surface in the very young. 

 They are more numerous in the ventral series. Those in the dorsal 

 series may not decrease regularly distally; the last one is sometimes 

 as large as, or even larger than, the one that precedes it. The apical 

 plate is small, conical. The actinal plates are large, polygonal, and 

 crowded, mostly in series parallel with the adambulacral plates, and 

 covered with coarse granules ; the granules on the center of the 

 plates are often larger and may be like small tubercles. Sometimes 

 part or all of these plates bear high, slender, spatulate pedicellarise. 

 The adambulacral plates and spinules and the dentary plates are 

 essentially the same as in Pentagonaster or Tosia. The adambulacral 

 spinules are numerous and closely crowded in three or more rows ;. 

 the row next to the furrow-series is largest. 



