Original description of Hedley:
Shell ovate, acuminate, imperforate, thin and slightly nacreous. Whorls Seven, the first wound horizontally, thus giving the spire a decapitated aspect. Median whorls separated by a channeled suture, flattened on the shoulder and subangled at the periphery, the last slightly descending behind the aperture. Colour : Pale buff with scattered irregular dashes of ochre alternate chocolate dots on the outer lip. Sculpture: The last whorl carries eleven widely-spaced fine spiral cords, the peripheral strongest. Of these six appear on the penultimate and fade gradually away on the upper whorls. Both cords and interspaces are crossed by delicate oblique lamellae which rise into stales upon the cords. They are crowded on the last whorl, do not cross the suture from whorl to whorl, and become fewer and fainter ascending the spire. The initial whorl is smooth. Aperture very oblique, subcircular. Outer lip effuse, fimbriated by the termination of the spiral sculpture, inner lip projecting over the umbilical region, thence spread from the axis to the right insertion as a solid sheet. Columella spirally ascending within, terminating below in a downwardly directed tubercle, succeeded by a deep notch and an answering ridge. Thence along the edge of the gullet underneath the external varix are about a score of callus rays, alternately long and short, leading to the throat. Behind the aperture, about a millemetre from the free edge, is a sharp, narrow varix rising gradually at the base and ending abruptly at the suture. Length 10, breadth 8 mm.

Description Wilson:
Protoconch whorls convex, axially lamellate; teleoconch whorls with delicate oblique-axial lamellae and spiral ribs, the ribs bearing short open-sided spines where the lamellae cross although the spines are obsolete on the body whorl, three ribs around the centre of the whorls plus one at the periphery and three on the base; umbilicus lacking; outer lip thin, crenulate; parietal wall thinly calloused, the callus becoming erect near the base and continuous with the outer lip. Cream, with oblique-axial light brown flames below the suture and on the base.

Several specimens from 100 fathoms forty miles south of Cape Wiles, South Australia.

Judging from literature, our shell is more elevated and finely sculptured than D. tinei, Calcara. This genus has not before been reported from the Southern Hemisphere. As in the Mediterranean and off the Azores, it appears to be confined to deep water.