Author: Smith and Radcliffe, 1912
Diagnostic Features:
Anterior nasal flaps very short, not expanded into barbels; snout very long, bulbously conical but slightly pointed, length about half head length and about equal to distance from mouth to pectoral fins; gill openings very small, uniformly wide; lips thin, not fringed, pleated or suctorial; teeth strongly different in upper and lower jaws, uppers small, with narrow, acute, erect cusps and no cusplets, no bladelike, lowers much larger, bladelike, interlocked, with a high, moderately broad, nearly erect cusp and distal blade, edges not serrated; tooth rows 22 to 23/ 16 to 21. First dorsal fin with a spine, covered by skin or not, but second dorsal without a spine; first dorsal fin well anterior, origin about opposite inner margins or free rear tips of pectoral fins, insertion well anterior to pelvic origins and loser to pectoral bases than pelvics; second dorsal fin much larger than first, base about twice as long as first dorsal base; origin of second dorsal fin over fron half of pelvic bases; pectoral fins with short, narrowly rounded free rear tips and inner margins, not expanded and acute or lobate; caudal fin nearly symmetrical, paddle-shaped, with a short upper and long lower lobe and a strong subterminal notch. No precaudal pits or midventral keels, but with low lateral keels on caudal peduncle. Dermal denticles flat and blocklike, not pedicellate, no posterior cusps on flat, depressed crowns. Cloaca normal, not expanded as a luminous gland. Colour blackish or blackish-brown with conspicuously light-margined fins.
Remarks:
The arrangement of this genus follows Seigel et al. (1977) and Seigel (1978).