Shell moderate to large sized, up to 73 mm., of light build, elongate-fusiform, with a tall turreted or pagodiform spire, and a long straight or slightly flexed, unnotched anterior canal. Protoconch small, globular, of 1 1/2 - 2 smooth whorls. Adult sculpture usually of axial nodes en the peripheral angle and plain spiral cords or threads on the lower part of the whorls. Sinus moderately deep, occupying the whole of the shoulder slope, its apex being broadly shallowly concave. There is no subsutural marginal fold, so the sinus commences at the suture. Below, the sinus is confluent with a considerable forward arcuate projection of the outer lip, which accentuates the appearance of depth to the sinus. Most species are devoid of colour pattern, but occasionally axially flamed in reddish-brown; usually there is a thin pale periostracum. Operculum ovate to leaf-shaped, with a terminal nucleus. Radula, a pair of marginals of modified wishbone-type, one of the two basal limbs separated and superimposed upon the larger element of the tooth, which tapers to a simple point. Range — Recent in the deep ocean basins of the southern United States, Caribbean, South Atlantic, Indo-Pacific and Antarctica. Also Eastern Pacific, Northern Australia and New Zealand; Miocene or Pliocene of Okinawa.

Shell moderately large, thin, white, or pale, with impervious axis, the sculpture chiefly of delicate spiral threading with feeble axial riblets at the shoulder; anal fasciole wide, shallow, next the suture; canal moderately long, clistally flaring; the pillar thick, anteriorly obliquely truncate; operculum subovate, acute in front, with a medial thickened rib on the inner face, the area of attachment small, the nucleus apical. (Dall.)
TYPE. Pleurotoma verrilli Dall.