Amberleya Morris and Lycett, 1850

Kiel, Steffen, Campbell, Kathleen A., Elder, William P. & Little, Crispin T. S., 2008, Jurassic and Cretaceous gastropods from hydrocarbon seeps in forearc basin and accretionary prism settings, California, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 53 (4), pp. 679-703 : 682

Genus Amberleya Morris and Lycett, 1850

Type species: Amberleya bathonica Cox and Arkell, 1950 ; Bathonian (Middle Jurassic), England .

Discussion.—Although our two species agree with the diagnosis of Amberleya , we find it difficult to distinguish them from modern Bathybembix . Our species also are similar to several Jurassic species that were recently assigned to Eucycloscala Cossmann, 1895 (see Gründel 2003; Kaim 2004), and they resemble to some extent the type species of Eucyclus Eudes−Deslongchamps, 1860 as figured by Wenz (1938 –44, figs. 544, 545). Warén and Bouchet (1993) noted that the Jurassic–Cretaceous eucyclid Oolitica Cossmann, 1894 resembles the modern hydrothermal vent genus Ifremeria Bouchet and Warén, 1991 ( Provannidae ). Some characteristics like the broadly littoriniform shell and the nodular spiral sculpture are indeed somewhat similar, but Eucyclidae and Provannidae can easily be distinguished based on their shell microstructure: eucyclids have nacre ( Hickman and McLean 1990) whereas provannids have crossed lamellar structure ( Kiel 2004). However, the shell microstructure of Oolitica ’s type species has most likely never been investigated. Due to the strong variability observed within the Californian species we prefer to use a conservative approach and assign them to Amberleya .