Shells small to medium-sized, « curled, imperforate, covered by an epidermis, with the spire sunken; aperture as high as the whole shell, entire anteriorly; no operculum. » – G. O. Sars: Bidrag til kundskaben om norges arktiske fauna, Christiania 1878, p.291. In addition, the animal has calcified gizzard plates to crush its preys, usually Scaphopods (Tucker Abbott & Morris, 2001).
 

« Shell external, usually solid, pyriform to ovoid, with only one visible whorl. Shell sculpture composed of spiral grooves, usually punctuated. Aperture as long as shell; spire sunken. Animal can only partially withdraw into shell; operculum absent. […] Flexible, non-muscular crop, gizzard large with three calcified gizzard plates (two large paired and one smaller unpaired), bound together by muscular fibre. » – Heggernes Eilertsen & Malaquias: “Systematic revision of the genus Scaphander (Gastropoda, Cephalaspidea) in the Atlantic Ocean”, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society vol.167(3), Oxford 2013, p.395.