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.

The first major international trilobite conference (which also dealt with related arthropod groups) was convened by David Bruton in Oslo in 1973. That meeting resulted in a 467 page proceedings volume (Martinsson, 1975) that has become an indispensible reference on arthropod paleobiology. With its abundance of high-quality empirical work and influential ideas, the ongoing utility of “Fossils and Strata 4” is assured, yet it is also a fascinating microcosm of the themes and concerns of paleontology as a whole a quarter of a century ago. Paleoecology blossomed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Autecology, and particularly functional morphology, dominates the volume, accounting for about one-third of the contributions. Plate tectonics was a relatively recent development in 1973 and, following the lead of Whittington and Hughes (1972), several papers tackled trilobite paleobiogeography. They vary from a bold attempt to determine oceanic circulation through the Ordovician by Ross to more conventional studies of biogeographic distribution that were aimed at providing further support for concepts of continental drift. There was a burgeoning interest in community paleoecology, and Richard Fortey's (1975) now-classic paper on the Early Ordovician faunas of Spitsbergen was the first to define trilobite “communities.” The volume was rounded out by diverse papers on trilobite anatomy based on material from the Burgess Shale and Beecher's Trilobite Bed, the microstructure of the trilobite cuticle, trilobites eyes, high level classification of trilobites, and various evolutionary themes (character displacement in agnostoids; adaptive radiation in Cambrian trilobites).

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.

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.

Predation is of great importance in understanding the diversification of spatangoid echinoids as well as their preservation in the fossil record. Herein, the spatangoid-dominated Miocene carbonate succession of Punta Foghe (Montiferru area, central-western Sardinia, Italy) is studied with the aim of reconstructing paleoenvironmental conditions and investigating abiotic and biotic factors, including predation, that influence the paleoecology and preservation potential of spatangoid echinoids.

The echinoid fauna is dominated by the spatangoid Agassizia and, to a lesser extent, the clypeasteroid Clypeaster. The fauna also includes both regular (undetermined diadematoids and camarodonts) and irregular (Plagiobrissus, Echinocyamus, and Koehleraster) forms. Echinoids and associated fossil content, along with taphonomic and sedimentological signatures, indicate an inner sublittoral environment with moderate energy conditions affected by high-energy events. Agassizia remains, which consist mainly of complete and well-preserved tests, commonly bear subcircular drill holes that are interpreted as the result of cassid gastropod predation and investigated with respect to size selectivity and stereotypy of attack sites. Potential biases related to drilling predation and biostratinomy on the preservation potential of spatangoid tests are discussed.

Agassizia lacks any morphological adaptation to minimize high predation risk, including defensive spines and the ability to burrow deeply into the sediment. An antipredator behavior possibly relied on a gregarious life-history strategy, reducing the frequency of attacks on specific individuals by cassid predators.

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.

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 Oñate Formation of Middle Devonian (Givetian) age is exposed in the Mud Springs Mountains of New Mexico, where it is represented by an unusually shaly and extremely fossiliferous facies. Tabulophyllum traversensis (Winchell) found here is the only rugose coral species known thus far from Middle Devonian rocks of New Mexico and is of special interest as evidence of migration between the area of the Oñate occurrence and those in the Cedar Valley Limestone in Iowa and the Traverse Group of Michigan. The occurrence is also of interest because of the association of the Oñate coral with the receptaculitid Sphaerospongia sp. cf. S. tessellata (also known from Canada, Australia, and New York). The corals apparently utilized receptaculitids as a solid substrate for post-larval growth and developed an extremely broad flat base, fixed to the upper surface of Sphaerospongia.

In 1968, R. H. Kilpatrick of Milton, Florida, discovered three large entelodont teeth in the bed of the Conecuh River in Alabama. Frank C. Whitmore, Jr. of the U.S. Geological Survey identified the specimens, visited the fossil locality, and began a study of this unique find. Two decades later, Whitmore realized that devotion to his true research interest, the study of fossil cetaceans, would not allow him time to complete the study of the entelodont remains. He generously passed the specimens on to the writer to finish the project for which he had laid the groundwork.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.