Oligocene landscapes of New Mexico were dominated by andesite stratovolcanoes and resurgent domes of ash-flow tuff (ignimbrite) cauldrons (Smith et al., 1985). This pervasive volcanism produced volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks that have been neglected by vertebrate paleontologists, so that, until now, no Oligocene vertebrate fossils have been discovered in New Mexico. This documents the initial results of vertebrate paleontological investigations of Oligocene rocks in New Mexico, a lower jaw of the oromerycid artiodactyl Montanatylopus matthewi, the first Oligocene mammal from the state. In this paper, CM = Carnegie Museum of Natural History and UNM = University of New Mexico.

Seven species belonging to three stromatoporoid genera are described from two localities at Empire Beach, southern Ontario. Stromatoporella is the most diverse genus, to which five species are assigned. The most common species is Syringodictyon tuberculatum (Nicholson), represented by ten of the twenty-four collected specimens. One genus, Syringodictyon, and one species, Stromatoporella megastrorhizifera, are new. Stromatoporella cf. S. composita Yavorsky is unassigned.

The species range in age from Emsian, or possibly Siegenian, to Frasnian. They correlate well with stromatoporoids described from strata equivalent to the lower Detroit River Group, Edgecliff Member (Onondaga Formation), as well as with the Couvinian–Eifelian horizons of Europe.

Two species of terebratulide brachiopods are described from the upper part of the Bateque Formation (middle Eocene) on the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, Terebratulina cf. Terebratulina louisianae Stenzel, 1940, and Terebratalia batequia n. sp. Terebratalia batequia n. sp. is the earliest confirmed record of the genus Terebratalia Beecher, 1893, which has been an important component of Pacific brachiopod faunas through to the present day. The occurrence of Terebratulina cf. Terebratulina louisianae Stenzel is one of the earliest records of the genus from the west coast of North America. These brachiopods, like other elements of the Bateque invertebrate fauna, may record Eocene migration from the Atlantic to Pacific Ocean via the Central American seaway.

A nearly complete test and several test fragments of the irregular echinoid species Macropneustes mortoni (Conrad) were recently discovered in Lower Oligocene (Vicksburgian) strata of southern Alabama. To date, M. mortoni has only been reported from Upper Eocene (Jacksonian) sediments of Alabama, Georgia, and Florida (Cooke, 1959; Toulmin, 1977; Carter, 1987). This is one of the very few species of the diverse Eocene echinoid fauna of this region to survive the terminal Eocene extinctions.

A single specimen of the new dictyonine hexactinellid species Verrucocoelia biswasi was collected from the Middle Eocene Fulra Limestone from Lakhpat Fort, Kutch, western India. The euretoid species is broadly bowl-shaped, 7–8 cm wide and 5–6 cm high, with walls of branched to weakly anastomosed tubes that extend upward and outward from a simple, unfluted, walled spongocoel. Skeletal strands diverge upward and outward from near the gastral surface of each tube. The sponge occurs in silty tan marl with abundant alveolinids and less common other large foraminifera, bivalves, and gastropods in sediments thought to have accumulated in a quiet, sheltered environment, possibly a lagoon.

During the course of field work for the invertebrate paleontology class at Bucknell University, part of an articulated polyplacophoran was discovered. Because these fossils are rare and because there are only two reports of North American Devonian polyplacophorans (Smith and Hoare, 1987), it is felt that this specimen should be described and illustrated.

During preparation of a manuscript on new collections of Upper Cambrian trilobites from the Threadgill Creek section in central Texas (Longacre, 1970, text-fig. 6), a new trilobite species Ptychopleurites spinosa was discovered that can be used to recognize a revised base to the Saukia Zone (Trempealeauan Stage) in central Texas. This species is represented in central Texas by numerous, well-preserved cranidia and librigenae, but no pygidia have been recovered. Recently Ptychopleurites spinosa was also identified in a collection of trilobites of the partly correlative Illaenurus Zone (= lower part of Saukia Zone) from the type section of the Deadwood Formation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This work is part of a paper that will describe the latest Franconian and Trempealeauan trilobites from the Deadwood Formation, using collections made by Dr. Christina Lochman-Balk. Ptychopleurites spinosa is represented in the Black Hills by incompletely preserved cranidia and well-preserved librigenae. Because it is not known which of these two papers will be published first, it was decided to establish Ptychopleurites spinosa as a new species with one of the better Texas cranidia as the holotype and the Black Hills material as part of the suite of paratypes.

Cryptonella? cailliaudi Barrois, 1889, from the Lower Devonian of the Armorican Massif, is tentatively assigned to the athyridid brachiopod genus Planalvus Carter, thus far known only from the Lower Carboniferous of eastern North America. In addition, a new species, Planalvus rufus, is described from the Bois-Roux Formation (Pragian) of Brittany, France. These French species are small brachiopods with complex spiralial and jugal structures, which permit assignment to the order Athyridida.

The holotype of the errant polychaete annelid Trentonia shegiriana Pickerill and Forbes, 1978 from the Middle Ordovician Trenton Group of the Quebec City area, Quebec, Canada (see Pickerill and Forbes, 1978, fig. 1, p. 660), and subsequently figured in Boardman et al. (1987, fig. 12.4, p. 199), has now been reposited in the Division of Natural Sciences, New Brunswick Museum, Saint John, New Brunswick, with the catalog number NBMG 6501. Although the Trenton Group in this area has yielded additional annelids of uncertain affinity (Conway Morris et al., 1982), the holotype of T. shegiriana still represents the only known specimen despite a further decade of investigation. At the time of publication, a repository for the specimen was unavailable, but Dr. R. Miller, Curator for Paleontological Collections, has now arranged to receive the specimen.

A microfossil study of two boreholes, Araromi and Gbekebo (Geological Survey of Nigeria borehole numbers 1131 and 1132) (Figure 1), revealed the occurrence of Buntonia beninensis Reyment (1960, 1963) in the late Paleocene interval. This species was found to have forms with normal overlap and hinge element and forms with a reversal of these morphological features. In the former, the left valve is larger than the right, which bears the projecting terminal hinge element, whereas, in the latter, the larger valve is the right valve with the smaller left valve bearing the projecting terminal hinge element.

The highly fossiliferous St. Marys Formation is exposed along Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, and comprises one of the best available records of late Miocene life in the northeastern United States. Rachycentron stremphaencus new species, a cobia from the late Miocene (Tortonian) of the St. Marys Formation is described herein on the basis of a single three-dimensional neurocranium. This fossil represents the earliest known occurrence of neurocranial remains of the genus Rachycentron in the record. Rachycentron stremphaencus differs from Rachycentron canadum (Linnaeus, 1766) in many ways. The most obvious include a different ornamentation of the outer surface of the cranial bones; a notably pronounced lateral ridge resulting in a considerable gradient from the dorsal-medial exposure of the frontal to its lateralmost supraorbital margin; the size, shape, and position of the sphenotic that is located in the posterior half of the neurocranium and its lateralmost edge being adjacent to the anteriormost extent of the wedge-shaped trough in the dorsal surface of the skull formed by the lateral and medial ridges; the two contralateral medial ridges forming a proportionately much wider trough on either side of the supraoccipital; the epioccipitals not reaching the rear edge of the neurocranium; and the lack of a conspicuous posterolateral prong of the intercalar.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/c8523bb4-2de2-4318-9a37-027f463a0441

Rousseau H. Flower (1913-1988) described and figured more than hundreds of fossil taxa, collected throughout the world, during his long and colorful career (Wolberg, 1988). Most of the fossils Flower worked with remain at the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources (NMBM&MR). Not surprisingly, given his interests in worldwide distributions of cephalopods and other groups, a rather small proportion of the fossils Rousseau worked with throughout his career were collected in New Mexico; a large proportion of the fossils actually belong to other institutions. The NMBM&MR continues to receive requests for published specimens and is making every effort to return loan material. The NMBM&MR also believes that the professional community would be best served by maintenance of the Flower/NMBM&MR fossils in a national repository. It was Rousseau's wish that the Smithsonian Institution/U. S. National Museum serve as one of the repositories of the NMBM&MR collections.

A method has been developed that uses holographic interferometry to generate contour maps of the occlusional surfaces of fossil teeth. The resulting contour map is, in itself, a valuable descriptive tool. In addition, it provides information for a very large data base, which has been used in trend-surface analysis and Q-mode clustering. As an example, these analytical techniques are applied to a set of Pliocene badger teeth. The same methods can be applied to any paleontological problem dealing with shapes of small objects.

Propeamussium (Parvamussium) holzense n. sp. and Propeamussium (Parvamussium) robinsonense n. sp. are described from the Upper Cretaceous Holz Shale Member of the Ladd Formation, Santa Ana Mountains, southern California. These species occur with Bostrychoceras elongatum (Whiteaves), Glyptoxoceras subcompressum (Forbes), and Inoceramus orientalus (Sokolow), which are indicative of a late medial Santonian age (Bostrychoceras elongatum Biochron). Propeamussium (Parvamussium) cowperi (Waring), from the Campanian Chatsworth Formation of the Simi Hills, southern California, is also redescribed and reillustrated for comparative purposes.

This year (1989) marks the 100th anniversary of the Kansas Geological Survey's location at the University of Kansas. Perhaps no single name is as closely associated with the Survey as Raymond Cecil Moore, director of the Survey and state geologist of Kansas from 1916 to 1954 (Figure 1). Moore was, without doubt, the principal influence on the Survey's character and direction in the first half of the twentieth century, and he continued to be involved in the Survey and its research until his death in 1974. In spite of Moore's seminal influence at the Kansas Geological Survey and the University of Kansas, a formal memorial for Moore was never published and a bibliography of Moore's written works never compiled. Thus, the following memorial and bibliography are published to commemorate Moore, 100 years after the founding of the organization that he affected most significantly and to which he devoted so much of his time and talent, the Kansas Geological Survey.

The enigmatic Silurian fossil Bunodella horrida Matthew, 1889 was originally described as a crustacean (Matthew, 1889). B. horrida was later included with the pseudoniscid synziphosurines by Størmer (1955) in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology. Bunodella Matthew, 1889 was subsequently dismissed as a merostome in later treatments (Eldredge, 1974; Anderson and Selden, 1997). However, the type and only known specimen (Fig. 1), housed in the New Brunswick Museum (NBMG), has not been re-studied since Matthew's initial description. Reexamination of this fossil has led us to interpret it as the partial coxa of a pterygotid eurypterid swimming leg. The coxa is likely to belong to Acutiramus Ruedemann, 1935 rather than any other pterygotid, but it cannot be further separated from other species in the genus and is left as Acutiramus sp. A more precise assignment must await more diagnostic material (e.g., chelicerae). The genus Bunodella Matthew, 1889 is therefore deemed invalid and its usage discontinued. Bunodella Pfeffer, 1889 was also established as a genus of a modern hexacoralline anemone based on a single species, B. georgiana Pfeffer, 1889, but has since been reassigned to the genus Parantheopsis McMurrich, 1904 by Carlgren (1949) along with several other species of anenome.