Among extant temperate marine biotas, the Peruvian Province is highly unusual in, among other traits, a very high incidence of limpets, gastropods with a labral tooth (to assist in predation), a reversed latitudinal diversity gradient, and the absence of several ecological guilds. These and other peculiarities arise from a history of high-magnitude extinction during the last fifteen million years. The province is also unusual in not functioning as a biogeographic refuge for previously more widely distributed species.image