Ecphora

See text Ecphora is the common name for a group of extinct predatory marine gastropod mollusks within the family Muricidae, the rocks snails or murexes.

Ecphoras were indigenous to the North American Eastern Seaboard, being found in marine strata from the Late Eocene until their extinction during the Pliocene.

The word was originally used by Vitruvius to signify the projecture of a member or moulding of a column, and here refers to the distinctive "T-shaped" ribs that project from the shell.

Ecphora also persisted, though, its species were slowly pushed south to coral reefs in southern Florida due to climate changes turning the Eastern Seaboard from tropical/subtropical to temperate.

Eventually, by the end of the early Pliocene, Ecphora and Planecphora were restricted to the Everglades atoll, until their extinction due to competition by newer murex genera invading from the Caribbean.