Range: W. Australia, Onslow to Port Hedland area.

Description: Moderately small, moderately light to moderately solid. Last whorl conical to ventricosely conical; outline variably convex adapically, less so to straight toward base; left side constricted at base. Shoulder angulate. Spire of moderate height, often stepped in early postnuclear whorls, outline concave. Larval shell of 2-2.25 whorls, maximum diameter 0.8-1 mm. First 1.5-4 postnuclear whorls weakly tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 0-1 increasing to 4-6 spiral grooves; last 2 ramps often with a few additional spiral striae. Last whorl with variably broad spiral ribbons, narrower or grading into groups of ribs at base and below shoulder; intervening grooves axially striate; sculpture may be weak or obsolete at adapical third to half.

Ground colour white. Last whorl with coalescing brown flames and blotches usually forming 4 interrupted or solid spiral bands, below shoulder, at base and on each side of centre; adapical markings extending to spire. Additional spiral rows of squarish brown spots may be present. Larval whorls white to grey. Postnuclear sutural ramps with brown radial streaks and blotches. Aperture bluish white.

Periostracum yellowish brown, thin, translucent to opaque, with spiral rows of tufts on last whorl and fine hairs on spire (Turnbull, pers. comm., 1987).

Foot cream, densely spotted with black; rostrum and siphon black.

Habitat and Habits: To about 10 m, in sand and mud, often close to weeds; on offshore islands in cleaner sand (Filmer & Coomans, 1985).

Discussion: C. dampierensis has been misidentified as C. tegulatus (see Coomans & Filmer, 1985); it also resembles the typical form of C. limpusi. The latter species is usually larger (to 55 mm), has a broader larval shell (1.2-1.3 mm) and prominent shoulder tubercles at the first 2-7 postnuclear whorls, and it lacks brown markings at the base.

C. dampierensis 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.