We examined the two Neogene species of the ocenebrine muricid gastropod genus Ceratostoma Herrmannsen, 1846, from Japan and North Korea, namely, C. makiyamai (Hatai & Kotaka, 1952) and C. sp., both from the early middle Miocene. The genus Ceratostoma is divisible into four groups based on C. nuttalli (Conrad), C. virginiae (Maury), C. foliatum (Gemelin), and C. rorifluum (Adams & Reeve). Three Miocene species from Kamchatka assigned by Russian workers to Ceratostoma are difficult to evaluate owing to poor preservation. Purpura turris Nomland, from the Pliocene of California, which was assigned to Ceratostoma by earlier authors, is here tentatively assigned to Crassilabrum Jousseaume, 1880. The genus Ceratostoma may have arisen in the Atlantic. By the early Miocene, it had reached California, and then spread westward to northeast Asia by early middle Miocene time. This pattern of east to west expansion during the early half of the Miocene also characterizes many other north-temperate marine genera, including the ocenebrine Nucella.
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