Exceptionally preserved fossils are described from the Westhoughton opencast coal pit near Wigan, Lancashire, UK (uppermost Westphalian A, Lower Modiolaris Chronozone, regularis faunal belt). The fossils occur within sideritic concretions in a 1.5-metre zone above the Wigan Four Foot coal seam. Arthropods dominate the fauna and include arachnids, arthropleurids, crustaceans, eurypterids, euthycarcinoids, millipedes and xiphosurans. Vertebrates are represented by a single palaeoniscid fish, numerous disarticulated scales and coprolites. Upright Sigillaria trees, massive bedded units and a general lack of trace fossils in the roof shales of the Wigan Four Foot coal seam suggest that deposition of the beds containing these concretions was relatively rapid. Discovery of similar faunas at the equivalent stratigraphic level some distance away point to regional rather than localized controls on exceptional preservation.

The Palaeozoic Uralian orogen formed by accretion of island arcs and microcontinents along the eastern margin of the East European platform. In the middle Urals, a promontory of the East European platform, the Ufaley Complex experienced eclogite facies conditions followed by an amphibolite facies overprint. The Verkniy Ufaley intrusion crosscuts the amphibolite facies foliation in the East Ufaley Complex and thus postdates the two metamorphic events. A concordant U–Pb age of 316±1 Ma obtained on magmatic titanite dates the intrusion of the pluton and provides a minimum age for subduction and subsequent amphibolite facies metamorphism of the East European continental margin. Zircon yields discordant age data that reflect the involvement of Proterozoic crustal sources.

New dinosaur specimens from the uppermost Cretaceous of Spain represent the first record of a lambeosaurine hadrosaurid from Europe. This discovery, which consists of skull, mandible, and postcranial remains from the Tremp Basin (Lleida Province, Catalonia), is particularly unexpected because lambeosaurines are otherwise well known from western North America and central and eastern Asia. Originally named Pararhabdodon isonensis, a species previously regarded as a basal iguanodontian dinosaur, new material indicates that Pararhabdodon is in fact a primitive member of the lambeosaurine clade. The presence of lambeosaurines on the Iberian Peninsula at the very end of the Cretaceous period is likely due to vicariance rather than dispersal. The distribution of hadrosaurids suggests biogeographic differences across the European archipelago at the end of the Cretaceous.

Extensive sections in the Thorington gravel quarry complex in eastern Suffolk include the most complete record to date of sedimentary environments of the Westleton Beds Member of the Norwich Crag Formation. New palaeoecological and palaeomagnetic evidence is presented, which confirms that the Member was deposited at or near a gravelly shoreline of the Crag Sea as sea level fluctuated during a climatic ameloriation within or at the end of the Baventian/ pre-Pastonian ‘a’ Stage (Tiglian C4c Substage).

Seismic refraction profiles on land and marine single-channel seismic profiling in inshore waters were used to supplement shallow-borehole data to determine the overall form of the Quaternary sequence in the coastal zone of North Norfolk. Refraction data from five principal profiles across the zone shows four velocity units, and correlation with the borehole data indicates that these (principally) represent (a) the surface drained/weathered zone, (b) Holocene and glacial sediments, (c) weathered chalk, and (d) fresh chalk. A strong reflection on two marine profiles is interpreted as the top of the Chalk. Integration of the data shows that Quaternary sediments are contained in a broad, shallow, east–west trending trough centred along the marshes, landward of barrier sediments. This trough extends eastwards beyond the present shoreline into the southern North Sea. The linearity of the axis of the trough and the adjacent coastline suggests an underlying structural control that may be east–west faulting on the northern side of the London–Brabant Massif.