Spire moderately high, angle usually 60-80°. Shell width slightly more than half shell length. Aperture slightly longer than spire. Periphery of body whorl situated approximately half way up shell. Sculptured usually by numerous fine spiral striae, sometimes with a few weak ribs on lower half of body whorl. Whorls slight to moderately depressed below suture; profile of upper whorls slightly convex. Shell robust. Aperture usually plicate internally. Pale brown parietal scar usually present. Periostracum thick, fibrous, brown. Shell colour uniformly dark brown, sometimes with thin pale whitish-brown spiral bands, these being most noticeable on the body whorl above parietal region; shell sometimes worn or colour completely obscured by greenish algal growth. Aperture white to light mauve-brown, sometimes with a darker brownish-violet outer edge. Proboscis flesh coloured. Maximum shell length 60 mm.

Burnupena c. limbosa has, however, been confused with a number of other species of Burnupena. Barnard (1959) regarded this taxon and B. catarrhacta as one of the 'two most confusing pairs'. The distinctions between them have been discussed in the remarks on B. catarrhacta. However, as noted above, Barnard seems to have confused B. catarrhacta and B. lagenaria. Of a total of 23 specimens from the BMNH which had been identified as B. limbosa, 12 are specimens of B. lagenaria. The two species can usually be distinguished by: (1) the height of the spire, with B. lagenaria generally having the shorter spire; (2) whether or not the aperture is plicate internally, with B. c. limbosa almost always plicate, but B. lagenaria usually not plicate, and (3) the colour of the shell and the aperture - B. c. limbosa with a brown shell and pale aperture, B. lagenaria with a flecked or brown shell and dark aperture. About one-third of the specimens at SAM identified as B. limbosa were not this species, and of these approximately half are specimens of B. rotunda. However, B. c. limbosa can be usually be distinguished from B. rotunda by (1) the height of the spire, which is shorter in B. rotunda, (2) the length of the aperture, which is about twice the length of the spire in B. rotunda but only slightly longer than the spire in B. c. limbosa, (3) the shell colour - dark brown in B. c. limbosa, but bluish-brown in B. rotunda, and (4) in certain populations, the colour of the aperture - always pale in B. c. limbosa, but dark in some populations of B. rotunda.

West coast from Swakopmund southwards, and extending around Cape Point to Simonstown , with two questionable records at Jeffrey's Bay and Gonubie.
Burnupena cincta limbosa inhabits the low intertidal to subtidal zone. We have reduced it to a subspecies of B. cincta based on the combined results of morphometric and electrophoretic studies (Dempster 1995a), together with the fact that limbosa and cincta occupy different geographic regions. The two taxa are very similar genetically, and differ morphometrically only in the extent of spiral ribbing present: B. cincta cincta is typically strongly ribbed, whilst B. cincta limbosa is typically smooth shelled. This distinction allows for relatively easy separation.