Shell solid, spirally sculptured, short-fusiform, with an unexpanded aperture, outer lip thickened, simple; body whorl smooth with a well marked smooth callus; nucleus not differentiated; pillar twisted, simple, shorter than the aperture; canal short, obliquely truncate, nearly straight, not deeply notched.
This shell recalls Dolium or Sconsia in its sculpture and texture, but is heavy and solid, has a much more produced spire, and a different outer lip and columella; it is perhaps most like Lagena, but without plaits on the pillar, lirae, or teeth on the outer lip; its relations are probably in this direction, or with Liomesus. It bears some resemblance to Liomesus, especially to such forms as L. canaliculatus Dall, but the unexpanded aperture, the marginated suture, the facies of the shell, and its habitat are rather against this allocation. In the absence of the soft parts and operculum its systematic position cannot be determined.

The shell of Dalium solidum differs from those of all species assigned here to Oocorys in a number of subtle characters, discussed in more detail under D. solidum, below. The main differences are the very much thicker and more solid shell and the more exert, straight-sided spire than those of Oocorys species. However, none of the shell characters is very fundamental. There also are no anatomical or radular differences from species assigned to Oocorys. It seems quite feasible that D. solidum is merely the youngest of a presumed lineage of tall-spired Oocorys species (ap¬parently containing also the Miocene-Early Pliocene D. dalli (Bose, 1906) and the Pliocene D. ecuadorianum Olsson, 1942) that lives in rather shallower water than most other species of the genus, and so has a thicker shell than other species assigned here. However, differences from Eucorys are almost as subtle as those from Oocorys, and Dalium might prove to be an earlier name for the genus here named Eucorys, rather than a synonym of Oocorys. It would be helpful for the generic position to know whether the protoconch of D. solidum (unknown at present) is relatively large, turbiniform and cancellate, as in Oocorys species, or small, few-whorled, smooth and cap-shaped, as in Eucorys species. In the mean time, Dalium tentatively is retained as a genus distinct from Oocorys.
Sven Nielsen (University of Hamburg) has sent me SEM micrographs of the protoconch of an apparently unnamed species of Dalium similar to D. dalli, from the Middle Miocene Ranquil Formation of Punta el Fraile, near Arauco, south of Concepcion, Chile. The protoconch (seen in dorsal view only) seems to be much like that of Oocorys sulcata, turbiniform and of several inflated whorls, but lacks the reticulate sculpture seen on all Oocorys protoconchs. Much greater knowledge of Dalium protoconchs is needed to tell whether this is a protoconch like that of Oocorys that merely has lost its sculpture through abrasion, or Dalium has a distinctive protoconch lacking reticulate sculpture.