Rhopalodinaria Cherbonnier, 1970

Thandar, Ahmed S., Zettler, Michael L. & Arumugam, Preyan, 2010, Additions to the sea cucumber fauna of Namibia and Angola, with descriptions of new taxa (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea), Zootaxa 2655, pp. 1-24 : 18

Genus Rhopalodinaria Cherbonnier, 1970

Diagnosis (from Thandar, 2001, amended herein). Tentacles 10, in a single ring; tube feet traverse ventral pole of sphere; mouth and anus well separated. Radial plates of calcareous ring with or without posterior bifurcations. Ossicles, a superficial layer of well developed tables with nodular to spinose and an inner layer of plates, heavily calcified or finely nodular at one end.

Remarks. This genus was established by Cherbonnier (1970) from materials coming from False Bay, South Africa. It is characterized by the presence of only 10 tentacles as opposed to 15 or more in the other rhopalodinids. Cherbonnier included in it two species, R. gigantea and R. minuta . Although the latter species was represented by complete specimens they were all juvenile and this might have influenced Cherbonnier in choosing R. gigantea , represented by only the proboscides, as the type species of his new genus ( Thandar 2001). Complete specimens of R. gigantea were subsequently described by Thandar (2001).