See text Pleurotomidae Turridae is a taxonomic family name for a number of predatory sea snails, marine gastropod mollusks in the superfamily Conoidea.

[1] The family name Turridae was originally given to a very large group of several thousand sea snail species that were thought to be closely related.

Most species have a poison gland used with the toxoglossan radula, used to prey on vertebrates and invertebrate animals (mostly polychaete worms) or in self-defense.

[7] This led to an outcry by Melvill & Standen in 1901: One cannot help feeling, indeed, the more the Pleurotomacea (now former name for the Pleurotomidae, synonym of Turridae) are studied closely, how painfully artificial and misleading are many of the characters which are employed in differentiating the sections, so called genera, and subgenera of this vast assemblage.

It is almost too large for the monographer, and so enormous are the number of species annually brought to light, especially since the abyssal forms have been sought after and procured with greater facility, that we fear confusion will soon be worse confounded, and the patience of malacologists tried too far, unless some benefactor of this race arises to study these forms alone as his life's work.

[8]Although some species were relatively common, many were rare, some being known only from single specimens; this is another factor that made studying the group difficult.