Deep water Bivalves with heart-shaped shells, more or less inflated, radially ribbed; hinge weak, with one or two low teeth, « usually restricted to a single rounded cardinal on the right valve anterior to the opisthdetic ligament, a few species also with a lateral tooth on the right valve; the ligament, most if not all of it internal, includes a lithodesma. » – Allen & Turner: “On the functional morphology of the family Verticordiidae…”, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London vol.268, London 1974, p.405. Umbones usually prominent.
 

« Shell globose, ossicle short, squarish; lunule present, not deep; right valve with hinge teeth as in Trigonulina; left valve with (in the adult) a small but distinct cardinal tooth and a short stout lateral tooth near the umbo; lunule not produced; adolescent or young shells with the dentition obscure or imperfect. Type Verticordia Fischeriana Dall. Gulf of Mexico in deep water. To this group belong V. trapezoidea Seguenza, and perhaps his V. granulata, which I have not seen, and which has not been well figured. These have been perhaps too hastily united by Dr. Jeffreys.  » – W. H. Dall: “Reports on the results of dredging, under the supervision of Alexander Agassiz, in the Gulf of Mexico (1877-78) and in the Carribean Sea (1879-80), by the U.S. Coast Survey steamer ‘Blake’, Lieut.-Commander C.D. Sigsbee, U.S.N. and Commander J.R. Bartlett, U.S.N. commanding. XXIX. Report on the Mollusca. Part 1, Brachiopoda and Pelecypoda”, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard College vol.XII part.6, Cambridge 1886, p.287.