Rhyssoplax Thiele, 1893

Dell’Angelo, Bruno, Landau, Bernard M., Sosso, Maurizio & Taviani, Marco, 2020, Late Pleistocene Red Sea Mollusca: 1. Polyplacophora, Zootaxa 4772 (3), pp. 401-449 : 412

Genus Rhyssoplax Thiele, 1893

Type species. Chiton affinis Issel, 1869 , by subsequent designation (International Committee of Zoological Nomenclature 1971, Opinion 951, as proposed by Beu et al. 1969).

Remarks. The genus Chiton was subdivided into numerous subgenera by Kaas et al. (2006), some of which (e.g. Rhyssoplax Thiele, 1893 ) were promoted to full genus rank by Sirenko (2006), based mainly on soft part morphology.

Distribution. Tropical and subtropical waters of the Indo-Pacific (except for the East Pacific), also in the Eastern Atlantic. The fossil record extends back to the Oligocene of New Zealand ( Dell’Angelo et al. 2011a), the Neogene of Europe ( Dell’Angelo et al. 2004, 2015; Garilli et al. 2005; Studencka & Dulai 2010), Africa ( Algeria: De Lamothe 1911; Tunisia: Castany et al. 1956), New Zealand ( Beu & Maxwell 1990) and Japan ( Itoigawa et al. 1976).