An abundant and diverse Late Griesbachian (Early Induan) Wordieoceras-dominated cephalopod fauna occurs in the lower part of the Daye Formation at the Wenjiangsi section, Guiding County, Guizhou Province, South China. The cephalopod fauna consists of 17 species belonging to 10 genera, including two nautiloid species and 15 ammonoid species representing the families Ophiceratidae, Proptychitidae, Meekoceratidae, and Khangsariidae. One genus and five species are new: Vishnuites wenjiangsiensis, Pseudovishnuites guidingensis, Wordieoceras guizhouensis, Gyrophiceras subplicatum, and Hubeitoceras? Wangi.

The platform element of the conodont Amydrotaxis praejohnsoni n. sp. shows statistically significant morphological changes from the base to the top of the delta Zone (Lower Devonian). The changes occur particularly in mean denticle number, height and character of the anterior denticles, and shape of the basal cavity. The earliest forms have fewer denticles ( = 7.1), an enlarged, high anterior denticle, and a broadly flared posterior basal cavity, whereas late forms have more denticles ( = 9.4), equal-sized anterior denticles, and a narrow posterior basal cavity. There is no stasis phase in the species history, but rather a mosaic pattern in which the observed changes in the character states are seemingly independent of each other and proceed at variable rates.

A brachiopod fauna of late Bathonian age recovered from the Kehailia Formation from Gebel Engabashi in northern Sinai consists of six species (two rhynchonellids and four terebratulids) referred to six genera, of which one genus and two species are new: Globirhynchia sphaerica (Cooper, 1989) new combination, Daghanirhynchia angulocostata Cooper, 1989, Ectyphoria sinaiensis new species, Cooperithyris circularis new genus and species, and new material: Avonothyris species A, and Ptyctothyris species A. The brachiopods described herein comprise a fauna located at the northern part of the Indo–African Faunal Realm within the Jurassic Ethiopian Province. They extend the geographic distribution of those taxa that show great affinity with the Jurassic brachiopod fauna of Saudi Arabia described by Cooper (1989). Differentiation of the endemic faunas that is so characteristic of many of these Ethiopian Province faunas is becoming more well-defined.

Patanacta pedina n. gen. and sp. is interpreted as a medusoid from the late Ordovician or early Silurian of Jämtland, central Sweden. The unique specimen is from the Kyrkås Quartzite Formation, a poorly fossiliferous, allochthonous sequence of metasediments in a lower nappe of the frontal zone of the Scandinavian Caledonides. A marginal marine depositional environment is inferred for the Kyrkås facies.

Rhabdosomes of Brevigraptus quadrithecatus n. gen., n. sp. (Lasiograptinae, Diplograptacea), from the Upper Ordovician Viola Springs Formation of south-central Oklahoma, comprise four fully developed thecae. The sicula and the first two thecae are fully sclerotized. The ultrastructure of the fusellum is unusually dense but is overlaid by a typical diplograptacean bandaged cortex. The third and fourth thecae consist of clathria covered by a cortical sheet. Lacinia are absent. The cortical sheet comprises bandages deposited in a support dominated pattern that matches expectations of the pterobranch model of peridermal secretion. Lists are fusellar derivatives and exhibit traces of fuselli-like growth increments but no continuous fusellum is present. Lists are strongly thickened with cortical tissue. The fabricational pattern employed in list construction reveals the operation of strong historical constraints during the evolutionary reduction of the fusellum.

The thecal form and list architecture of Brevigraptus quadrithecatus are nearly identical to those of Pipiograptus hesperus Whittington. Brevigraptus quadrithecatus possesses a Pattern G astogeny and exhibits several derived astogenetic features that it shares with P. hesperus and Orthoretiolites hami Whittington. Both thecal and astogenetic similarities suggest the new taxon is a member of the Lasiograptinae, and is closely allied to the aforementioned species.

The thecae of B. quadrithecatus exhibit striking similarity with Dicaulograptus hystrix (Bulman). However, both the details of thecal construction and primordial astogeny differ markedly between these species. The thecal similarities appear to be convergent. Accordingly, D. hystrix is probably not closely allied to the Lasiograptinae.

The genus Cirquella is erected for small, smooth nevadiid trilobites that lack genal spines. The type species, C. nummularia, is associated with taxa in the Dogtooth Mountains, British Columbia, that belong to the Nevadella Zone. A second species, C. espinata, is described from the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains, where it is associated with the new archaeaspid genus Geraldinella. Strata in the latter locality can be physically correlated to documented strata of the Nevadella Zone. The same zone in Nevada contains C. nummularia?.

The order Mecoptera is represented on all continents, albeit with an uneven distribution. Mecoptera includes about 34 families (Labandeira, 1994, p. 34), only four of them, until now, represented in South America: Permochoristidae Tillyard, 1917 (†) (Pinto, 1972); Bittacidae Handlirsch, 1906 [and stem-group “Neorthophlebinae” (†)] (Petrulevičius, 2001a, 2003, 2007); Nannochoristidae Tillyard, 1917; and Eomeropidae Cockerell, 1909. The two latter families have a present relict distribution in southern South America but without fossil record, obviously an artifact due to few studies of fossil insects in the subcontinent. The diversity of recent Bittacidae is high in South America with respect to other continents. Thirty-five percent of recent genera of Bittacidae come from South America, and 80% of these genera are endemic (extracted from Penny, 1997). Bittacidae is well represented in the fossil record, with species from the Jurassic of Patagonia (Petrulevičius, 2007), Lower Cretaceous of Brazil (Petrulevičius and Martins-Neto, 2001), to the late Paleocene of Argentina (Petrulevičius, 1998, 1999, 2001b, 2003). This contribution reports a specimen belonging to the Panorpoidea, a group with no recent species in South America and very few species in the entire Southern Hemisphere.

Upper Tithonian (Jurassic) ammonites occur in the Chinameca Formation at Chinameca, southern Veracruz, eastern Mexico. The fauna includes Eopaquiericeras peraltai n. gen. and sp. and E. pazi new genus and species of the family Platylenticeratidae, Chinamecaceras maldonadoi n. gen. and sp. of the subfamily Aspidoceratinae, Veracruciceras ruizi n. gen. and sp. and V. myczynskii n. gen. and sp. of the subfamily Simoceratinae, Durangites zigzagcostatus n. sp., and representatives of Haploceras, Salinites, Kossmatia, and Andiceras. Kossmatia is the most abundant and biostratigraphically significant ammonite in the Chinameca fauna and its age significance and distribution in Mexico is discussed. In addition, a comparison of the suture lines of Kossmatia and the related older genus Lemencia indicates that they both belong to the Tithonian subfamily Richterellinae rather than the Upper Oxfordian–Kimmeridgian families Ataxioceratidae and Lithacoceratidae. The Chinameca ammonites have affinities with taxa of the same age from central and northern Mexico, Cuba, and the southern United States.

The order Spiriferinida represented a significant group whose extinction is linked to the early Toarcian mass extinction event. The genus Cisnerospira Manceñido, 2004, conspicuous representative of this group in the Early Jurassic of the western Tethys, is analyzed from a systematic standpoint, grounded mainly on evidence from the Subbetic domain, and its initial diagnosis is revised accordingly. A definitive suprageneric position within the subfamily Paralaballinae is formally proposed in the light of new data herein provided. Both external and internal diagnostic features and the generic and intraspecific variability are described through the analysis of the Cisnerospira species recorded in the easternmost Subbetic area, i.e., Cisnerospira adscendens (Deslongchamps, 1858), C. aff. adscendens, C. angulata (Oppel, 1861), and C.? sylvia (Gemmellaro, 1882). In addition, their interrelation with other records from several Tethyan basins is addressed, and the generic spectrum has been extended to include several species with high morphological affinity. This characterization thus contributes to clarify certain ambiguities in the systematics of the spiriferinids, which entails a complex taxonomy mainly based on the external features, where the ribbing pattern was given foremost classificatory value due to the lack of more reliable generic diagnostic criteria. Furthemore, a morphofunctional analysis performed in Cisnerospira reveals a presumable epibenthonic libero-sessile way of life, and two alternative adaptive strategies are discussed: resting on and/or sticking in substrates with different degree of consolidation, providing a significant hydrodynamic stability to the shell.

Two new conulariid species, Conularia clarkei Babcock and C. paraguayensis Babcock from the Vargas Peña Shale, are the first Silurian conulariids to be described from Paraguay. They increase to three the number of Silurian species to be described from South America. The concept of Conularia Miller in Sowerby, 1820, is emended. It includes as junior synonyms Conularia (Plectoconularia) Bouček, 1939, Diconularia Sinclair, 1952, and Yangoconularia Xu and Li, 1985. The age of the Vargas Peña Shale has long been disputed, but conclusions based on organic-walled microfossils indicate an Early Silurian (Llandoverian) age for the unit.

Late Permian gastropod fauna in the Mt. Everest (Qomolangma) region, southern Tibet (Xizang), China is poorly known. This paper describes a small gastropod fauna collected by one of the authors (SSZ) from the upper part of the Qubuerga Formation at the Qubu section. The section is located at about 30 km north of Mt. Everest (Fig. 1). Although a limited number of specimens is available, the fauna is more diverse than all previously reported gastropod faunas (e.g., Yu, 1975) from southern Tibet. Description of the gastropod fauna in the Mt. Everest region adds significant data for understanding the distribution of gastropods during the Late Permian and the paleobiogeographic relationship between the Himalayan and Tethyan regions.

New field collections allow the study and description of Valvata juliae new species from the Pliocene upper Burgi Member of the Koobi Fora Formation of Kenya. The shell morphology of this species varies from trochospiral to planispiral to open coiled. The species is restricted to a short stratigraphic interval. Valvata juliae is considered as an invader of the Turkana Basin during a lacustrine transgression event. The open coiling of the species is interpreted as an ecophenotypic response to a high level of environmental stress caused by lake level fluctuations and emergence of delta systems. These environmental conditions brought Valvata juliae to extinction soon after it invaded the Turkana Basin.

A specimen of the aquatic reptile Champsosaurus sp. from the Paleocene Black Peaks Formation in southwestern Texas is the southernmost yet known. the fragmentary specimen exhibits some unusual features, such as a great anterior extent of the quadratojugal on the lower temporal arch, and cannot be attributed with confidence to any of the named species. Champsosaurus appears to have been tolerant of temperate climates and had a northern latitudinal range exceeding that of crocodylians. It seems likely that the brief southward extension in range of Champsosaurus during early Paleocene time resulted from a decrease in mean annual temperature, comparable to over 10° of paleolatitude.

A new species of Apiocrinites is described from the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic, upper Callovian) of Hamakhtesh Hagadol, southern Israel. Apiocrinites feldmani n. sp. is a small species associated with the larger A. negevensis in a calcareous sponge and coral patch reef community. During life the columns of A. feldmani were commonly and preferentially infested with a soft-bodied parasite that grew with the crinoid and became embedded in its skeleton. These parasites embedded at the articulation between columnals, forcing the columnals to grow around them and producing with time a conical pit surrounded by swollen stereom. If the parasite died while the crinoid was still growing, the conical pit was roofed over by continued growth of columnals, resulting in a swelling with no external opening. Because the crinoids invested energy in forming extra skeleton around these parasites and because the crinoid stems were consequently deformed and likely lost flexibility, we consider these parasites to have caused significant harm. Curiously, these parasites apparently did not infect the larger and more common contemporaneous A. negevensis that lived in the same community.

A new trace fossil from the Lower Triassic of northern Italy is described. It is a sinuous resting trace of a bilaterally symmetrical worm-like animal. The anterior end is characterised by a pair of lateral projections. It most closely resembles an acorn-worm (class Enteropneusta) in morphology. As such, it is the only known resting trace of an acorn-worm from the fossil record.

Huene (1935) first reported dicynodonts from the Triassic Santa Maria Formation of southern Brazil. Most common are specimens of Dinodontosaurus from localities near Chiniquà (Chiniquà local fauna) and near Candelaria (Candelaria local fauna) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The other Middle Triassic dicynodont found near Chiniquà is the huge (about 3 m body length) Stahleckeria potens, and an equally large Middle Triassic dicynodont, Barysoma lenzii, is known from near Candelaria. A fourth, supposed Santa Maria Formation dicynodont, Jachaleria candelariensis (Araújo and Gonzaga, 1990), is actually from a younger, Upper Triassic, horizon of the Caturrita Formation near Candelaria (Bonaparte, 1982). Here, I argue that Barysoma lenzii is a junior subjective synonym of Stahleckeria potens and discuss the biochronological significance of this synonymy.

Ferugliotherium windhauseni Bonaparte, 1986, the only species of the genus Ferugliotherium, was based on an isolated m2 and placed in a new family, the Ferugliotheriidae, which was tentatively assigned to the order Multituberculata, subclass Allotheria (Bonaparte, 1986a). Additional specimens subsequently referred to F. windhauseni by Bonaparte et al. (1989), Bonaparte (1990), and Krause et al. (1992) include isolated upper and lower incisors, anterior upper and lower premolars, a complete M1, and an anterior fragment of m1. These remains, if correctly associated, serve to confirm the multituberculate affinities of Ferugliotherium, the first known multituberculate from Gondwanaland (Krause et al., 1992).

A new genus and species of amynodontid rhinoceros, Rostriamynodon grangeri, from the early Late Eocene of Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, is the most primitive amynodontid recognized to date. Rostriamynodon exhibits the major diagnostic characteristics of amynodontids: quadratic M3, preorbital fossa, and loss of upper and lower P1. It differs from more advanced members of the family in its long preorbital region and lower cheek tooth morphology. Comparisons with other Eocene ceratomorphs show the crucial position Rostriamynodon has in determining phylogenetic relationships between rhinocerotoids and tapiroids. Evidence is presented for the monophyly of the Rhinocerotoidea, including amynodontids.

A single specimen of Ratcliffespongia wheeleri n. sp. from the upper part of the Middle Cambrian Wheeler Shale in the Drum Mountains of western Utah shows two distinct skeletal layers in the limonite-replaced fragment. The probable inner layer has large, circular to elliptical parietal gaps, some of which are aligned horizontally(?); gaps are outlined by long rays of hexactine-based spicules in irregular orientation and spacing. The probable outer layer has several ranks of stauracts in regular reticulation and ranking, all at approximately 45 degrees to the probably horizontal direction. The specimen is part of a probably shallow turbidite-transported assemblage from the margin of the House Range embayment.

Permian shallow marine strata are widely distributed in the Southern Kitakami Massif, Northeast Japan. They yield many marine fossils and have been well studied both stratigraphically and biostratigraphically. However, the geological age of the upper part of the Permian in the Tassobe district, located in the northern part of the Southern Kitakami Massif (Fig. 1), is still an unsettled question. The Permian is divided into the lower Tassobe and upper Sotokawame Formations (Okuyama, 1980; Yoshida et al., 1992). Early Permian (Sakmarian–Artinskian) fusulinoideans have been known from the middle to lower-upper part of the Tassobe Formation (Hirokawa and Yoshida, 1956; Saito, 1968; Yoshida et al., 1992), whereas no age-diagnostic fossils have been found from the overlying Sotokawame Formation. In the course of the geologic survey of the Permian, we collected two ammonoid fossils from the lower part of the Sotokawame Formation, which can provide us a basis for stratigraphic correlation. This paper describes these ammonoids and discusses their stratigraphic and biogeographic significance.