Genus Neosinocythere is described from the upper Miocene Itahana Formation in Central Japan, documenting the first record from Japan. The Neosinocythere species were discovered in gravity-flow sediments that were deposited below a depth of 84.9 m with a paleo-summer bottom temperature of 23.7°C and a paleo-winter bottom temperature of 14.1°C, based on a modern analog technique using the ostracode assemblage. Paleobiogeographical and paleoenvironmental analyses indicate that Neosinocythere appeared around the southeastern coast of the Eurasian continent, extended distribution in the northern coast of the Eurasian continent before migrating southward along the coast of the Eurasian continent as global temperatures decreased. The high-diversity area shifted from high latitudes to low latitudes.

Strata of the Solvik Formation in the central Oslo region (upper Hirnantian to upper Aeronian) are rich in atrypides that elucidate the evolution of this group. A few athyridide brachiopods are also present. Eleven taxa of smooth spire-bearers are described taxonomically using fossils and peels. Among these occur one new genus, Eisaella, and five new species: Eisaella uniplicata, Thulatrypa huangi, T. vikenensis, ?Becscia pentagona, and Shelvothyris bivittata. Atrypides make up 30% (24 genera) of the total brachiopod genera in the Solvik Formation, more than one third of the known global atrypide fauna during that interval. Most are members of the family Lissatrypidae, illustrating the evolution of this group from upper Hirnantian and lower Silurian strata. These show close affinity to each other attesting to ongoing radiation. The new genus Eisaella is a likely ancestor of Lissatrypa, while Meifodia displays a gradual evolution through the formation. Atrypides were most diverse at the base and top of the Solvik Formation due to heterogony in environments and water depth, but were less diverse in the comparatively constant environmental setting of the late Rhuddanian time. The basal assemblages with few atrypides from shallow facies may be compared to the shallow Cathay Fauna of China. Most of the abundant Norwegian atrypide fauna is found in deeper water with few comparable faunas known globally. The Oslo region may have served as a center for the evolution and spread of atrypides immediately following the end-Ordovician glacial drawdown in sea level.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/508dba95-5501-403d-9a4d-deeb324847c9

A remarkable fossil assemblage composed of five gastropod taxa is described from the Early Miocene of Santa Cruz (Patagonia, Argentina) in southernmost South America. The assemblage includes extinct and living genera South America, and on geographic distributions and represent background new information on spatial and across time distributions as well as identification of new taxa. A new taxon, Patagocharopa enigmatica n. gen. n. sp., is tentatively assigned to Charopidae. Gastrocopta patagonica n. sp. (Vertiginidae) represents the oldest record of Gastrocopta in Argentina and the southernmost record for the Americas. Punctum patagonicum n. sp. (Punctidae) represents the first record of Punctum for continental South America, and characterized by a protoconch with traces of axial costulae and a teleoconch with strong radial ribs. Zilchogyra miocenica n. sp. is the first Miocene record of the charopid genus Zilchogyra. Fragments of a possible Scolodonta (Scolodontidae) are recorded. Overall, the assemblage represents an important and useful paleoenvironmental tool. This fauna suggests that a more temperate and humid environment than today—with a more dense vegetation cover—was prevalent at this site during the Early Miocene.

Carnivores make traces on bones with their teeth when feeding. A true predatory bite trace (predichnia) forms when a predator catches and kills its prey or attempts to do so. Both predators and scavengers may leave their nonpredatory feeding traces during postmortem food processing. Despite the interpretative uncertainties as to the ethology such ichnofossils may represent, the bite traces have been traditionally classified as predichnia—traces of predation. Previously, there was no alternative ethological category available for workers to classify them. The present paper fills that gap and describes tooth-made ichnofossils from the continental Upper Triassic Grabowa Formation of southern Poland. It discusses modes the serration and striations might have formed along Linichnus edges, potential makers of the trace fossils, feeding strategies, and food-processing behaviors the ichnites may represent. All the bite traces are thought to act as a record of carnivorous behaviors and are classified as sarcophagichnia, a new ethological category (traces of feeding on a body). Finally, all the studied bite traces were likely inflicted postmortem and are classified as necrophagichnia (traces of feeding on an already dead body), most likely produced by scavengers in the studied cases. Data on recent carnivores link these ichnites with postmortem food-processing behaviors, such as dismembering and defleshing. Scavenging could, in fact, have been a preferred carnivorous feeding strategy in the seasonal Norian climate of the area. Dry seasons could have perhaps increased vertebrate mortality rates and provided plenty of carcasses for carnivores to feed on.

The west coast of North America record of the shallow-marine stromboid gastropod genus Rimella Agassiz, 1841 is restudied for the first time in 90 years. This genus comprises a small group of Paleogene gastropods characterized by having an ornamented fusiform shell, a posterior canal ascending the spire, and simple (non-flared) outer lip. Rimella, whose familial ranking has been inconsistent, is placed here in family Rostellariidae Gabb, 1868, subfamily Rimellinae Stewart, 1927. Ectinochilus Cossmann, 1889; Macilentos Clark and Palmer, 1923; Vaderos Clark and Palmer, 1923; and Cowlitzia Clark and Palmer, 1923 are recognized here as junior synonyms of Rimella. Four species are recognized from the west coast of North America: early to middle Eocene Rimella macilenta White, 1889; early Eocene Rimella oregonensis Turner, 1938; middle to late Eocene Rimella supraplicata (Gabb, 1864) new combination, of which Rostellaria canalifer Gabb, 1864, Cowlitizia washingtonensis Clark and Palmer, 1923, and Cowlitzia problematica Hanna, 1927 are recognized here as junior synonyms; and late Eocene Rimella elongata Weaver, 1912.

Rimella was a warm-water gastropod whose earliest known record is of early Paleocene (Danian) age in Pakistan. Other than the west coast of North America, Rimella is found in Eocene strata in western Europe, Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, southeastern United States, Panama, Peru, and, to a lesser degree, in Trinidad, Columbia, Java, and New Zealand. Global cooling near the end of the Eocene greatly diminished the genus. Its youngest known occurrences are of early Oligocene age in Germany, Italy, England, and Peru.

A new species of drywood termite (Isoptera: Kalotermitidae) is described from a nearly complete alate specimen preserved in early Miocene Ethiopian amber. Glyptotermes abyssinicus new species is distinguished by its U-shaped head with 12-segmented antennae, the ocelli separated from the eye margin, the right mandible with an obtuse angle between the apical and first marginal teeth, the left mandible with an obtuse angle between the apical and first + second marginal teeth, and the wing venation. This is the first termite reported from Ethiopian amber, and the fourth Miocene species of the extant genus Glyptotermes Froggatt, 1897, together with species previously described from diatomites of China and amber from the Dominican Republic. As the oldest report of the genus known from Africa, G. abyssinicus n. sp. constitutes an interesting new record for the biogeographical history of the kalotermitid lineage.

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The trilobite Liostracina has been recognized as important in taxonomic and stratigraphic studies for more than a century. Until now, the genus Liostracina and family Liostracinidae have been known from only incomplete holaspid material, a degree 2 meraspis, and protaspides. A new locality in the Longha Formation (Cambrian: Guzhangian) of southeastern Yunnan, China, yields a rich collection of articulated holaspid exoskeletons and disarticulated sclerites of a new species, Liostracina fuluensis n. sp. These specimens reveal thoracic and ventral morphology that was previously unknown for Liostracina; they demonstrate that it has a rostral plate plus rostral and connective sutures, rather than a ventral median suture on the cephalic doublure. This confirms a natant hypostomal condition for the genus. Holaspid exoskeletal features, combined with evidence of a non-asaphoid-type protaspis, indicate that Liostracina is neither a primitive trinucleoid nor a primitive asaphoid. The family Liostracinidae is excluded from the superfamily Trinucleoidea and the order Trinucleida and reassigned to the order Ptychopariida.

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The new fossil micromammal assemblage of Çapak represents a mixture of both Anatolian and European faunal elements. The locality is very important for understanding faunal evolution in the less well-known time interval at the end of the early Miocene of western Anatolia. In Çapak, nine species of rodents and one species of ochotonid were encountered: the hamsters Democricetodon gracilis, Megacricetodon primitivus, Eumyarion aff. E. montanus, Cricetodon cf. C. aliveriensis, Cricetodon sp., and Karydomys cf. K. strati, the mole-rat Debruijnia sp., the squirrel Aliveria luteyni, the dormouse Myomimus tanjuae n. sp., and the pika Albertona balkanica. The assemblage is referable to Anatolian local zone E or MN unit 4. The relative abundance of the various genera is markedly different from that of the older early Miocene assemblages, suggesting that the environment in Anatolia became drier and had a more open landscape.

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Ordovician open marine Lagerstätten are relatively rare and widely dispersed, producing a patchy picture of the diversity and biogeography of nonmineralized marine organisms and challenging our understanding of the fate of Cambrian groups. Here, for the first time, we report soft-bodied fossils, including a well-preserved marrellomorph arthropod, fragmentary carapaces, and macroalgae, from the Late Ordovician (Katian) Upper Member of the Kirkfield Formation near Brechin, Ontario. The unmineralized elements and associated exceptionally preserved shelly biota were entombed rapidly in storm deposits that smothered the shallow, carbonate-dominated shelf. The marrellomorph, Tomlinsonus dimitrii n. gen. n. sp., is remarkable for its ornate, curving cephalic spines and pair of hypertrophied appendages, suggesting a slow-moving, benthic lifestyle. Reevaluation of marrellomorph phylogeny using new data favors an arachnomorph affinity, although internal relationships are robust to differing outgroup selection. Clades Marrellida and Acercostraca are recovered, but the monophyly of Marrellomorpha is uncertain. The new taxon is recovered as sister to the Devonian Mimetaster and, as the second-youngest known marrellid, bridges an important gap in the evolution of this clade. More generally, the Brechin biota represents a rare window into Ordovician open marine shelf environments in Laurentia, representing an important point of comparison with contemporaneous Lagerstätten from other paleocontinents, with great potential for further discoveries.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/884589d0-08f7-4398-ab42-1f5d459be9e9

Protandrous sex change (sex change from male to female) is one of the diverse sexual expressions exhibited by bivalves, but its expression in the shell is quite rare. Previous studies on living and fossil astartids suggest a relationship between protandrous sex change and the formation of crenulations on the ventral shell margin at later ontogenetic stages. Here we report the formation of such crenulations in the Early Jurassic astartid Nicaniella rakoveci (Kuhn, 1935) from the Amaltheenton Formation at Buttenheim, Franconia. This is the earliest known record of protandrous hermaphroditism in fossil bivalves, predating previous reports by at least 13 Myr. A principal component analysis of linear size measurements and Fourier shape analysis of the shell outlines revealed that the outline of Nicaniella rakoveci specimens varies from subquadrate to subcircular, but this variation is independent of the presence or absence of crenulations and therefore not associated with sex. Crenulated specimens exhibit a lower height/inflation ratio than non-crenulated ones, suggesting that the protandrous females have more inflated valves than the males. The formation of crenulations was probably related to allocation of resources for reproduction. The most likely function of the crenulations was to increase the internal shell volume in the female stage to accommodate more eggs rather than being an adaptation against predation as often assumed for other bivalves. The formation of crenulations is part of the protandrous life history and probably is controlled by a genetic mechanism that is also responsible for sex change.

The outcrop at Whiterock Canyon Narrows, Nevada, is the stratotype for the Middle Ordovician Whiterockian Series in Laurentia. Contrasts in the distribution of trilobites and conodonts between two parallel sections at the stratotype demonstrate the presence of an unconformity separating Ibexian faunas (the historic trilobite Zone J, the more recent restricted “Pseudocybele nasuta” trilobite Zone, the Reutterodus andinus conodont Zone) from overlying Whiterockian faunas (Zone L, the Psephosthenaspis pseudobathyurus trilobite Zone, the Orthidiella brachiopod Zone, the Tripodus combsi conodont Zone). The unconformity represents the erosional loss of a minimum of 10 m of shale and bedded limestone within the upper Ninemile Formation. In comparison to more continuous section in the Ibex region, Utah, the equivalent to the thin Psephosthenaspis microspinosa trilobite Zone and, possibly, the uppermost interval of the underlying “P. nasuta” Zone are missing. Illaenus welchi new species is described from the Whiterockian faunas of the upper Ninemile and Antelope Valley formations.

An extinct ictalurid catfish, Ictalurus spodius n. sp., is described from the Pleistocene of Central Mexico. It shares derived osteological characters with the subgenus Ictalurus and the I. punctatus species group. The new species is known from middle Pleistocene fluvial and lacustrine sediments and was abundant until near the end of the Pleistocene when it was replaced by a closely related species, I. dugesi. The latter is known from late and post-Pleistocene lake-bottom deposits and is widespread in Central Mexico today.

The gastropod fauna of the Lower Cretaceous of the Argentinian Neuquén Basin contains three aporrhaid species. Protohemichenopus neuquensis Camacho, 1953 is the most abundant, longest-lived, and most geographically widespread of the aporrhaids of this basin, and its protoconch and early teleoconch whorls were unknown until now. The new species Dimorphosoma weaveri features convex to subtly angular spire whorls with opisthocyrt collabral ribs that are more prominent towards the mid-whorl, a bicarinate last whorl with small rounded nodes on the adapical carina, a simple, falcate labral wing which is more or less rectangular proximally and tapering and curving towards its distal end, and a short, straight rostrum. Tylostoma jaworskii Weaver, 1931 is now placed in Harpagodes, and other previous, scattered, coeval records of this genus in the basin are now recognized as part of this single species. It is believed that whereas H. jaworskii preferred shallower-water carbonate settings of low to moderate energy, P. neuquensis and D. weaveri favored siliciclastic to mixed clastic-carbonate environments, in deeper waters. In spite of its endemic elements, this aporrhaid association depicts a predominantly Tethyan influence.

A previously undescribed fossil specimen of deep water crab belonging to the family Homolidae de Haan, 1839 was discovered in the collection of the Museo Paleontológica de Bariloche of Río Negro Province, Argentina. the specimen is exceptional because one of the extra-lineal flanks is present. These lateral portions of the carapace are often absent in homolid crab specimens, due to disarticulation of the carapace along the lineae homolicae (Glaessner, 1969). the specimen was collected from the (middle?) Oligocene Río Foyel Formation (Casadío et al., 2004), which crops out south of the town of San Carlos de Bariloche, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains (Fig. 1). Paleogene specimens of the Homolidae are exceedingly rare, due in large part to the lack of preserved rocks from deepwater environments Feldmann et al., 1991), which they prefer in modern oceans. This specimen is of particular importance because it is not only the first reported fossil occurrence of the genus Paromola Wood-Mason, 1891 but also provides additional evidence as to the depositional environment of the Río Foyel Formation.

The rudist bivalve Durania aguilae Adkins was described from the Mendez Formation in Mexico and originally attributed to the Santonian. We revise this species and show that it belongs to the genus Chiapasella Müllerried. We also recognize that Chiapasella aguilae (Adkins) is a senior synonym of Chiapasella trechmanni Mitchell and Gunter, an important biostratigraphic indicator in the late late Maastrichtian of Jamaica. Chiapasella aguilae is therefore an important late late Maastrichtian marker fossil that has been recorded from Jamaica, Mexico, and Cuba.

The fossil record of the family Camerobiidae has been represented by only one species, Neophyllobius succineus Bolland and Magowski, 1990, described from Eocene Baltic amber. These prostigmatan mites are distinguishable by their distinctly long and slender stilt-like legs, and they are associated with aboveground vegetation where they hunt for other small invertebrates. This paper enhances the knowledge of fossil stilt-legged mites. Two new fossil species, N. electrus new species and N. glaesus new species, are described from samples of Baltic amber, and remarks on their morphology and taphonomy are provided. The discovery is complemented with a discussion on morphological singularities (the shape of the prodorsum, the location of setae h1 and h2 in living specimens, and lengths of genual setae), an anomaly of hypertrophied seta (found in the N. glaesus holotype), and some biogeographical issues.

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Members of the echinoid order Spatangoida, a highly diverse and abundant marine invertebrate clade, were important denizens of the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway (WIS), an epicontinental seaway that divided North America in two during an interval of greenhouse conditions between roughly 100 and 65 million years ago. A phylogenetic analysis of spatangoids was conducted using a character matrix of 32 characters from 21 species. Species that occur in the WIS were considered comprehensively, and species from other regions such as South America, Europe, and North Africa were also incorporated into the analysis. Phylogenetic patterns retrieved are largely congruent with preexisting family-level classifications; however, species within several genera, especially Hemiaster and Heteraster, need to be reassigned so that classification better reflects phylogeny. The genera Washitaster and Heteraster are closely related, as are Mecaster, Palhemiaster, and Proraster; Pliotoxaster, Macraster, and Hemiaster; and Micraster and Diplodetus. Biogeographic patterns were also considered using the phylogeny, and several episodes of vicariance and range expansion were identified. These were possibly related to some of the various major episodes of sea-level rise and fall during the Cretaceous. In particular, Valangian–mid-Aptian regressions may have caused vicariance within Heteraster and Washitaster while other early spatangoid vicariance may be related to regressions during the late Aptian–early Cenomanian. Further, vicariance caused by regressions during the mid-Cenomanian–Maastrichtian may have driven diversification within Micraster and Diplodetus. Last, transgressions during the late Aptian–early Cenomanian seem to have spurred prominent range expansions in Mecaster and Hemiaster.

The presence of a new taxon, Duraznovis gallegoi new genus new species is reported and described from an early Late Triassic (Carnian) deposit in Argentina. Two specimens, recovered from the Quebrada del Durazno locality, uppermost levels of the Potrerillos Formation, Cuyana Basin (Mendoza), are represented by the molds of their shield and imprints of soft parts. The identity of these specimens appears enigmatic but closely resembles in the possession of a generalized arthropod morphology and a distinctive combination of characters, to living and fossil representatives of xiphosurans (Chelicerata) and notostracans (Branchiopoda). The new fossils are associated with a rich biota comprising abundant insects, spinicaudatans, plants, and scarce fish remains living in semipermanent swamps and/or ponds within a delta plain environment with intermittent episodes of flooding, in a warm temperate and humid megamonsoonal climate during Triassic times. In this context, we analyze the taphonomic and ecological implications of their presence. Lastly, these unique specimens at the Quebrada del Durazno locality adds to the diversity of the biota, revealing the importance of this site as an exceptional paleontological Triassic deposit.

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