Maximum length 28 mm

The shell is moderately small (maximum length 28 mm ) and biconic. The spire is high, consisting of five or six strongly shouldered postnuclear whorls and a protoconch of undetermined nature. The suture is indistinct. The body whorl is of moderate size and broadly fusoid. The aperture is of moderate size and ovate, with no apparent anal sulcus. The margin of the outer apertural lip is furrowed, the furrows opening into short, open spines; the inner surface of the outer lip is strongly lirate. The columellar lip is entirely adherent and smooth, except for one to three very weak plicae at its base. The siphonal canal is broad, moderately long, and open at the right.
The body whorl bears ten or eleven close-set, spinose varices, their thin, appressed leading edges crossing the shoulder obliquely. Spiral sculpture consists of a variable number of major and minor cords, these most prominent on the varices, where they form very short, sharp, open spines. Between the varices the cords are quite weak. The spines developed from the cord at the shoulder margin are two or three times as long as the others, but nonetheless moderately short. Shell color is white, with red-brown on the spines and just subsuturally. The aperture is white.
The typical form of this species, as figured by Sowerby ( 1834, fig. 22 ) , has nine cords, six on the body (four majors, two minors ) and three on the canal (all minor). Another form, more frequently encountered in collections today, especially from the Galápagos Islands, bas fewer spiral cords and, thus, fewer roes of spines; it also bears a rose suffusion on portions of the body, and canal.
Radwin & D'Attilio, 1976.

Mazatlán to Peru and the Galápagos Islands.