Range: S.E. India to W.Thailand.

Description: Moderately large to large, moderately solid to solid. Last whorl ventricosely conical, outline convex adapically and straight below. Shoulder angulate. Spire usually of moderate height, stepped, outline almost straight. Larval shell of about 3.5 whorls, maximum diameter 0.7 mm. First 2-4 postnuclear whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat to concave, with 0-1 increasing to 3-7 spiral grooves; additional spiral threads and striae on latest ramps. Last whorl almost smooth or with widely spaced weak spiral grooves abapically and ribbons between.

Ground colour white to cream. Last whorl sometimes with narrow cream to yellowish brown spiral bands from base to shoulder. Overlying spiral rows of variously sized and shaped, brown to dark brown markings fuse into variably prominent interrupted spiral band, below shoulder, just above centre and within abapical third. Larval whorls white to pale brown. Postnuclear sutural ramps white or cream with brown to dark brown radial streaks and blotches. Aperture light purple, paler deep within, sometimes with shades of orange.

Periostracum dark brown, thin, translucent, and smooth.

Habitat and Habits: In 50-150 m.

Discussion: C. pretiosus is essentially identical to C. lynceus in sculpture and colour pattern . C. lynceus tends to have a broader last whorl (RD 0.50- 0.58); its spire is not stepped, the spiral grooves on its late sutural ramps more prominent but with narrower elevations between, its periostracum grey instead of brown. C. pretiosus may represent a variant of C. lynceus, occurring indeeper water (50-150 m vs. 20-50 m) where it lives sympatrically in W. Thailand (da Mott & Lenavat, 1979). We provisionally consider C. pretiosus a separate species.

C. pretiosus 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.