Turridae
Turridae is a taxonomic family name for a number of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.
| Turridae | |
|---|---|
| Five views of a shell of Turris crispa | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Mollusca |
| Class: | Gastropoda |
| Subclass: | Caenogastropoda |
| Order: | Neogastropoda |
| Superfamily: | Conoidea |
| Family: | Turridae H. Adams & A. Adams, 1853 (1838) |
| Type genus | |
| Turris Batch, 1789 | |
| Genera | |
|
See text | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Pleurotomidae | |
The family name Turridae was originally given to a very large group of several thousand sea snail species that were thought to be closely related. The family was described with about 700 genus-group taxa and an estimated 10,000 recent and fossil species. However, that original grouping was discovered to be polyphyletic.
In recent years, the family Turridae has been much reduced in size, because a number of other families were created to contain the monophyletic lineages that had previously been thought to belong in the same family.
The common name turrids is still used informally to refer to the polyphyletic group.