﻿4 FOSSIL ASTEROIDEA. 



M. Perrier showed that none of the recent species ranked as Goniaster pre- 

 vious to 1875 had any right to be so called. He consequently employed the name 

 in a new and restricted sense, taking the Asterias obtusangula of Lamarck as the 

 type of the genus. No other species is at present known which can be regarded 

 as congeneric with that form. 



A large number of fossil Starfishes have been named as species of Goniaster, 

 but none of them present characters which justify their reference to that genus 

 in its new sense, and none of them invalidate the course taken by Prof. Perrier. 

 It will therefore be unnecessary in the following pages to discuss in each case 

 separately the reasons for removing the large number of species which have 

 from time to time been ranked under the name of Goniaster. 



Subfamily — PentagonasterinjE, Sladen. 



Pentagonastebin^;, Sladen. Zool. Chall. Exped., part li, Report on the Aste- 



roidea, 1889, pp. xxxi, 262. 



Pentagonasteridse with the abactinal area paved with rounded, polygonal, or 

 paxilliform plates. Granules or spinelets when present co-ordinated. 



Genus— CALLIDERMA, Gray, 1847. 



Callidebma, Gray. Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., part xv, 1847, p. 76 ; Ann. and Mag. 

 Nat. Hist., 1847, vol. xx, p. 198; Syiiop. Spec. Start'. 

 Brit. Mus., 1866, p. 7. 



Marginal contour stellato-pentagonal. General form depressed. Disk large 

 and flat. Rays moderately elongated and tapering. Marginal plates forming a 

 broad border to the disk, and may be united along the median abactinal line of 

 the ray throughout [or, in some fossil species, may be separated by one or more 

 series of medio-radial plates, at least at the base of the ray]. The marginal 

 plates of both series are granulated. [In recent species the supero-marginal 

 plates bear some small papilliform spinelets on the margin where the abactinal 

 and lateral surfaces of the plate unite ; and the infero-marginal plates have a 

 number of similar, but larger and more fully developed, spinelets irregularly dis- 

 tributed amongst the granulation of the actinal surface.] Abactinal area of the 

 disk covered with small and regularly arranged plates, hexagonal in the radial 

 areas, bearing co-ordinated granules, and some with a larger, globular, central, 



