« Tellina. Shell ovate-constricted, transversally substriate, with sharp margins, covered by a slight epidermis. » – Linné: Systema naturae vol. I, page 675 in the 10th edition. « Shell very flat, pellucid, flesh-coloured, barely inflected, with an extremely sharpened edge. »

The genus Peronaea, whose animal was defined by Poli in his Testacea Utriusque Siciliae…, has a shell « oblong, thin, anterior side short, posterior elongated, sub-angular, with a slightly elevated marginal plicature; ligament in a long deep groove; lateral teeth obsolete, cardinal elongated, but not very prominent. » – Blanford & Stoliczka: Cretaceous fauna of southern India vol. III, Calcutta 1871, p. 119. The P. planata is then only a very flat species of Peronaea that lives in West Africa, Mediterranean and Cantabrian seas.