D’Orbigny describes the new genus Scissurella as follows: « Shell univalve, free, umbilicated, with a lowered spire; aperture subcircular, without canal, lips disunited and without peristome; their right edge is cut by a deep fissure that followed the increase of the whorls, obliterated itself at a small distance from the edge of the aperture, and traced on the back of the shell a kind of keel. » – A. D. d’Orbigny: “Monographie d’un nouveau genre de mollusque gastéropode de la famille des trochoides”, Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris series 2 vol. I, Paris 1824, p.343.

« Shell oval, white, translucent, fragile, with a flattened summit, having three whorls, the top of which is furnished with high transverse ribs spaced from each other, and whose underside shows the same ribs but more salient and practically sharp; the space between the coasts is almost united and shows only very slight roughnesses. The two edges of the fissure form two beads which leave between them, in the obliterated part, an interval marked by close and very pronounced transverse lines; the umbilicus is surrounded by circular striae, the mouth is almost quadrangular, the lips are sharp. » – op. cit. p.344.