Range: Banka Saya de Malha, Indian Ocean; reports from Amirante Is. have to be confirmed.

Description: Moderately large to large, moderately solid to solid. Last whorl narrowly conoid-cylindrical; outline somewhat convex adapically, straight (right side) or slightly concave (left side) below. Aperture somewhat wider at base than near shoulder; depth of exhalent notch about 1/4 of maximum diameter. Shoulder angulate. Spire of moderate height to high, outline straight to slightly concave. Maximum diameter of larval shell about 0.9 mm. First 7-8 postnuclear whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat to slightly concave, with 2 increasing to 5 spiral grooves; last ramp may bear 4 grooves and a few spiral striae. Last whorl with spiral ribs from base to shoulder, restricted to basal third and weak in large specimens.

Shell Morphometry
  L 60-103 mm
  RW -0.26 g/mm
     (L 85 mm)
  RD 0.39-0.43
  PMD 0.76-0.81
  RSH 0.18-0.25

Ground colour white. Last whorl overlaid with light brown to orange leaving 4 spiral rows of white tents and blotches to almost solid white bands, just below shoulder and centre and within adapical as well as basal third. Intervening spiral colour bands may contain scattered white tents. Spiral rows of brown dots and dashes extending from base to shoulder, containing intermittent bright white dashes within the ground-colour zones. In a colour pattern variant from the type locality, last whorl light brown except for sparse white markings centrally, with wavy axial lines at centre and within adapical third. Larval whorls white. Postnuclear sutural ramps matching last whorl in colour pattern. Aperture white, or pale pink deep within.

Periostracum yellowish grey, thin, translucent, smooth.

Habitat and Habits: In 80-100 m.

Discussion: C. primus cannot be confused with any of its Indo-Pacific congeners. C. milneedwardsi may be superficially similar but is distinguished by its broader and more conical last whorl (RD 0.42-0.54; PMD 0.86-0.94), generally higher spire (RSH 0.20-0.36), relatively deeper exhalent notch, and by its colour pattern including prominently reticulated lines but lacking dotted to dashed spiral lines.

Range Map Image

C. primus 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.