Shell small, 4-9 mm., elongately-ovate with a tall spire, a narrow body-whorl, tapered to a short, oblique, shallowly notched anterior canal, but a heavily variced and arcuately flared outer lip. Protoconch of 2 ½ -3 rapidly increasing whorls, the last with weak protractive axial riblets, and sometimes keeled. Inner lip with a deeply set denticle just above middle height and some smaller denticles below. A feature of the shell is the prominent, rather distant, vertical, rounded axials, which are aligned from whorl to whorl as in Pseudoraphitoma.

Shell elongate to rhomboid-ovate, tightly spaced axial riblets on final protoconch whorl, teleoconch whorls with prominent ribs that align from one whorl to the next on the final whorls, interspaces with fine costae, sometimes smooth, periphery projecting in several species. Color ranging from white to light brown, often with dorsal marks of brown near the base or shoulder of the final whorl, rarely continuing on whorls anteriorly. Apertural denticles absent to moderate near sinus, occasionally with less distinct denticles anteriorly on outer lip of aperture, rarely with microscopic pustules on columella region. The genus is well represented in the western Atlantic with less diversity in the northern Pacific Ocean.

Range — Southeastern United States, the Caribbean and Brazil. Pliocene, Florida, Miocene, Florida, Jamaica and Dominican Republic. Oligocene, Florida.