The shell is large for the genus (maximum length 31 mm), heavily fusiform and robust. The spire is high and acute, consisting of six or seven convex postnuclear whorls and a protoconch of undetermined nature. The suture is weakly impressed, where it is not completely obscured by strong, broad varical buttresses. The body whorl is of moderate size (one-half the total shell length) and broadly fusoid. The aperture is small and ovate, with a well-marked anal sulcus. The outer apertural lip is erect and flaring, and crenulated in a pattern reflecting the spiral shell sculpture; the inner surface of the outer lip bears six prominent denticles, the anterior and the most posterior both heavier and more prominent than the middle four (the posterior denticle is actually a reinforced knob delimiting the anal sulcus from the aperture). The columellar lip is smooth and entirely adherent. The siphonal canal is long, broad, narrowly open, and weakly dorsally recurved at its tip.
The body whorl bears three long, massive, rope-like varices and three secondary axial costae, these alternating with the varices. Spiral sculpture consists of seven moderate to very prominent cords on the body and four other, weaker cords on the canal. Shell color is a dull, translucent-dirty white, with red-brown markings on the axial sculptural elements and a solid red-brown band at the shoul-der margin. The shell is covered by a moderately thick, flat-white to brown-white, microscopically axially striate intritacalx; where axial growth lines in the intritacalx cross the spiral threads in the intritacalx, the entire layer appears minutely cancellate. A thin, pale-brown periostracum covers the entire shell.

Although long confused with D. obeliscus, just as that species has been confounded with D. pauperculus, this species has within recent years been recognized and collected alive in Panama.

Mazatlan, Pacific Mexico, to Panama.