Shell. Thin, with 7-8 whorls forming a rather tall and slender spire (apical angle about 40°), with blunt apex. The whorls are moderately tumid, without subsutural flattening, and meet at marked sutures well below the periphery of the adapical whorl. They are covered by a thin periostracal layer, usually partly lost. To the naked eye the shell appears smooth, but it is covered with many growth lines which are prosocline near the suture but become orthocline as they cross the whorls. Whorl 3 (and sometimes part of 4) bears many low spiral ridges and grooves, and these may be patchily visible elsewhere, though the last whorl normally shows none.
The protoconch has about 2.5 whorls, the first a little insunk; both are smooth. It measures about 5 mm across, 3 mm high.
Aperture. This lies in a slightly prosocline plane and is oval, with an outer lip which is semicircular, thin, and arising below the periphery of the last whorl. The siphonal canal is short, wide, and all but totally open. The columella occupies about half the apertural height, its lip considerably evened and pustulate. There is neither umbilical groove nor distinct siphonal fasciole. In the parietal region the inner lip forms an extensive glaze.
Colour. The shell is yellowish or a pale bronze colour with some darker and lighter patches, one of
the former always on the parietal glaze. The columellar edge and the protoconch are white.
Size up to about 70 x 40 mm. Last whorl = 60-70% of total shell height; aperture - c. 50% shell height.
Animal. Like other buccinum spp. but differentiated by the round operculum with central nucleus.
Colour. Cream or yellowish with small black markings.
Geographical distribution. This is an Arctic species which extends south as far as Shetland on the European side of the Atlantic and to Newfoundland on the American.
Habitat. On soft bottoms from 100 m to 1200 m deep; in deeper water in its European range, shallower in the American. It seems to be rare in the area dealt with here but is abundant in East Greenland.
Food, breeding, growth. The food is unknown. Egg capsules arc laid in clusters and each comes to contain 2-8 embryos which have been nourished on food eggs. They hatch as juveniles.