Range: New South Wales and S. Qeensland, Australia to N. New Zealand; New Caledonia.

Description: Small to medium sized. Last whorl conical; outline usually straight; left side may be slightly sigmoid to slightly concave. Shoulder sharply angulate, tuberculate to smooth. Spire of moderate height to high, slightly stepped; outline concave to almost straight. Larval shell of about 4 whorls, maximum diameter about 1 mm. Postnuclear spire whorls usually tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps concave, with closely spaced radial threads. Last whorl variable in sculpture: Almost smooth specimens with weak spiral ribs on basal third intergrade with specimens with widely spaced, strong and granulose ribs and some intervening weak and smooth ribs.

Ground colour white to cream. Last whorl with fine orange to brown, wavy axial lines and 2-3 slightly darker, interrupted to solid spiral bands. In some specimens, entire last whorl with orange to brown blotches. Postnuclear sutural ramps with curved radial lines and streaks matching last whorl pattern in colour. Aperture pale pink, grading to white at each end.

Periostracum chestnut brown, paler brown in light-coloured shells.

Habitat and Habits: In 50-295 m.

Discussion: Strongly sculptured subadult specimens of C. howelli are very similar to adult specimens of C. raoulensis. The latter species is smaller (L 16-22 mm), has a generally broader last whorl (RD 0.67-0.76), and its last whorl pattern usually includes indistinct instead of prominent axial lines. In similarly sized specimens, the periostracum is yellowish brown in C. raoulensis but chestnut brown in C. howelli. Both species occur sympatrically on the Wanganella Bank (N.W. of N. New Zealand) without intergrading (Marshall, 1981).

C. howelli range map

This section contains verbatim reproductions of the accounts of 316 species of Conus from the Indo-Pacific region, from Manual of the Living Conidae, by Röckel, Korn and Kohn (1995). They are reproduced with the kind permission of the present publisher, Conchbooks.

All plates and figures referred to in the text are also in Röckel, Korn & Kohn, 1995. Manual of the Living Conidae Vol. 1: Indo-Pacific Region.

The range maps have been modified so that each species account has it own map, rather than one map that showed the ranges of several species in the original work. This was necessary because each species account is on a separate page on the website and not confined to the order of accounts in the book.