Notes on Loricata. 9. On the rediscovery of Lepidopleurus africanus Nierstrasz, 1906 and the systematic position of the taxon Parachiton Thiele, 1909

Mr. R.A. Van Belle (Sint-Niklaas, Belgium) recently showed me a dried and stretched specimen of a lepidopleuroid species that he had received on loan from Mr. S. Palazzi (Modena, Italy). It was collected at Gallipoli, Golfo di Taranto, Italy, and forms part of the collection of the Palaeontological Institution of Modena (fig. 1). The specimen was labelled “Lepidopleurus cancellatus. M 91 C”. In fact it does not bear any resemblance to that species, as it has a very large tail valve with the mucro far posterior, quite like in some species of the Australasian genus Parachiton. In 1906 H.F. Nierstrasz described Lepidopleurus africanus from Oran, Algeria, based on a single specimen in alcohol, which holotype is now in the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie, Leiden, no. 2783. The description and figures given by Nierstrasz suggest that the author had a Parachiton before him, but as during seventy years the species never turned up again, one inclined to believe that the specimen described by Nierstrasz might rather have been of Australian provenance than from Oran, and that it was wrongly labelled.