Shell moderately large to very large, up to 95 mm., elongate-fusiform, with a tall spire
and moderately long straight to slightly flexed, unnotched anterior canal. Protoconch papillate, of two smooth whorls, carinate or subcarinate over the last whorl. Adult sculpture of long fold-like axials, crossed by dense spiral lirae. Suture submargined by a very weak fold at most. Sinus moderately deep, rather broadly
U-shaped, on the shoulder slope, but nearer to the periphery than to the suture. Operculum with a terminal nucleus. Radula of "wishbone"-type, paired marginals but with the distal limb detached, as in Turricula. The animals of two deep water species have been examined, in one, Comitas onokeana vivens, a New Zealand species from 260 fathoms, it is blind, but a new species from a similar depth, off the Aru Islands, has well developed eyes, stepped midway on the outer edge of short broad-based cephalic tentacles.
Unless the opercular and nuclear characters are known it is aften difficult to distinguish between Turricula and Comitas, except for a general observation that in the latter, the adult sculpture tends to consist of long fold-like axials, crossed by a surface sculpture of closely spaced rather weak spiral lirations or striations.
In Turricula the adult sculpture is mostly a combination of strong axials and spirals, with the former relatively short, aften resulting in peripheral nodulation.
Range — typically New Zealand, upper Oligocene to Recent, Eocene to Miocene of southern Australia and Tasmania, Miocene of Java, Miocene and Pliocene of Japan and Okinawa, and the deeper waters of the Indo-Pacific from South Africa to Japan.
In general ferms, Turricula inhabits the shallow warm waters of the Indo-Pacific, and Comitas, the deeper and cooler waters of approximately the same area and southward to Australia and New Zealand.