A New Species of Morum (Gastropoda: Harpidae) from the Lower Miocene Cantaure Formation of Venezuela

Abstract

The Cantaure Formation is exposed in a series of arroyos about 500 meters south of an abandoned house known as "Casa Cantaure," which is 14 km west of the village of Pueblo Nuevo in the Paraguana Peninsula, Venezuela. Since the Cantaure Formation was first monographed by Jung (1965), a trickle of new species have been described in the literature thanks to collecting done in the 1970's by Mr. and Mrs. Jack Gibson Smith, then of Caracas, now of Surrey, England. My interest aroused by their reports, I visited the locality in 1992 and returned in 1995. My own collecting produced numerous new and unusual shells, one of which is described here.