A spirally wound shell with a slit at the mid-point of the outer lip continued up the spire as a closed slit-band with raised edges.
The shell has 4—5 rather swollen whorls, the spire moderately high, decorated with many low prosocline costellae crossing the whorls and with still finer spiral ridges running from costa to costa. There is a wide umbilicus. The aperture is oval, the lip a little out-turned basally. White. About 1 mm high. 2 mm broad.
The animal has a short, broad snout. The head bears two setose tentacles, each with an eye at the base. A bay in the mantle skirt underlies the slit in the shell, providing an exhalant opening from the mantle cavity; its edge carries five tentacles, some of which project through the slit. The foot is truncated anteriorly, rounded behind. On each side it bears seven epipodial tentacles, two behind each cephalic tentacle, three grouped at the middle of the foot, two posteriorly by the operculum. All. except the anterior pair, are setose. Animal white, eyes black.

Anatoma cf. crispata (Fleming, 1828) Crispate Scissurelle
Distribution: Arctic to Florida, Texas; DEEP WATER
West Indies; Europe.
Size: Diameter 2.5 mm; altitude 2 mm. Description: Color white; shape trochiform; sculpture of numerous fine axial threads on the whorls crossed by fine spiral threads, giving a coarse look; base of body whorl with spiral threads crossed by axial threads; distinct spire; anal fasciole long and deep; slit of selenizone at periphery or just above; suture deep and bordered by 2 keels; protoconch elevated without ornamentation or smooth; umbilicus open and deep, no carina; operculum with numerous spirals and central nucleus; wider than tall. Habitat: Deep-water habitats at depths from 90 to 130 m (300 to 433 ft). Remarks: A. crispata is a species that has been described from deep waters throughout the world. Very likely, the use of this species name has been overextended (Geiger, pers. comm.). See Redfern (2001); Geiger and Jansen (2004).
Synonym: Scissurella crispata Fleming, 1828.

Material Examined. California, Santa Maria Basin, Phase I: sta. 36,492 m (1); sta. 108,492 m (2). Other material: 30 lots in the LACM collection.
Description. Globose, delicate, translucent white, whorls 4, edges of selenizone sharp, raised. Axial sculpture of fine raised ridges, crossed by fine spiral ridges of equal strength. Outer lip thin, inner lip slightly reflected; umbilicus deep. Height 3-6 mm.
Type Locality and Type Specimens. Noss Island, Shetland Islands, Scotland; type material not located. Scissurella kelseyi: off Point Loma, San Diego County, California, 640 fathoms; holotype: USNM 181820, specimen missing. Scissurella chiricova, SE of Chirikov Island, Alaska, 695 fathoms; holotype: USNM 206509.

Distribution. Circumboreal, Arctic Ocean to Isla Cedros, Baja California (28°N); also south to the Mediterranean, the Azores, New England, and Japan. Habitat. Soft bottoms from sublittoral to abyssal depths, becoming deeply submergent at lower latitudes. In the eastern Pacific it occurs as shallow as 55 m off the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, and at 400-1800 m off California. Remarks. This species, described originally from the North Atlantic, has a number of additional synonyms from localities other than the eastern Pacific, as indicated by McLean (1967). The synonym S. kelseyi Dall was based on an exceptionally large specimen, 6 mm in height One other species of the genus, Anatoma lyra (Berry, 1947), occurs in rocky sublittoral habitats in southern California (McLean, 1967).

A.crispata occurs at depths of 8-2000 m off the south and west coasts of England and Ireland, the west and north coasts of Scotland on gravelly or shelly bottoms with admixed mud. It is circumpolar in general distribution, occurring in deeper water in lower latitudes. Its feeding and breeding are not known, but it is probably a grazer or detritivore with external fertilization.