Shell short to elongate, inflated to compressed, with regular, pronounced, widely spaced commarginal ribs. Rostrum produced, truncate. Periostracum yellow to dark brown, shiny. Escutcheon well defined by a marginal ridge, generally wide. Length to 18mm. Leda lomaensis was based on a southern, deep-water form with a thinner shell and a narrow escutcheon. Arctic specimens are more compressed than southern material.
Panarctic and circumboreal. From the Beaufort Sea at Point Barrow (71.4°N) [USNM], through Bering Strait and the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, south to Santa Catalina Island, California (33.3°N) [LACM]; south to Scotland in the eastern Atlantic, to Maine in the western Atlantic, and to Kamchatka and northern Japan in the western Pacific; from 4 - 1,900 m. Also reported as early as the Pliocene in western North America.