The Turridae are a real can of worms. Many scientists now accept the
classification of the Conoidea proposed by Taylor, Kantor and Sysoev in the
Bulletin of the Natural History Museum, London (1993 : vol. 59(2), 125-170)
which puts the Turridae on an even phylogenetic footing with the Conidae,
Pervicaciidae and Terebridae. We adopted this arrangement in our Catalogue
and Bibliography of the Marine Shell-bearing Mollusca of Japan, published
in May this year. Under this scheme, the 'Turrids' are just part of a
larger superfamily, and the 'Cones' (Conus and Conorbis) are a subfamily,
the Coninae.
What we can say about the 'Turrids' (by which I mean those groups formerly
treated as the Turridae) is that they are very successful primary predators
with an enormous distribution. The literature is far from comprehensive,
and some works on the fossil species (including those of Oostingh and some
of Powell's work) serve at present only to complicate matters (not that
they're wrong). As in all such cases, the more you can publish in the form
of clear figures of specimens with accurate localities, the more you will
help us all form a picture. This is something anyone can do.

Paul Callomon