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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

The genus Collarothyris was erected by Modzalevskaya in 1970 (p. 155) with Meristella canaliculata Wenjukow, 1899, as type species. Wenjukow (1899) did not designate a type; however, on p. 143 he gave the measurements of two specimens, one of which was figured on Plate VII, figure 21, and designated holotype by Modzalevskaya (1970, p. 156). Unfortunately, this specimen is lost (see also Nikiforova, Modzalevskaya, and Bassett, 1985). Further checking of the collections of the Geological Museum of the Geological Institute of Science, Kiev (Ukrania), resulted in finding, among Wenjukow's (1899) original collection, one specimen (No. 367/165) labelled as Meristella canaliculata and whose measurements coincide with one of those given by Wenjukow (1899, p. 143). This specimen is here figured (Figure 1) and selected lectotype of Collarothyris canaliculata (Wenjukow).

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.

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.

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 new sinistrally coiled univalved mollusk Catalanispira n. gen. is described with two species; Catalanispira reinwaldti (Öpik, 1930) from the Middle Ordovician Kõgekallas Formation (Darriwilian) of Estonia and Catalanispira plattevillensis n. gen. n. sp. from the Upper Ordovician Platteville Formation (Sandbian) of northern Illinois, USA. Morphological features include a large, low-trochiform shell, a narrow lenticular aperture, a deep funnel-like umbilicus, a falcate inner lip and a large (1.4 mm wide) protoconch. Ornamentation consists of fine commarginal growth lines or ribs but superimposed on a slightly irregular shell surface. Catalanispira n. gen. is placed within the sinistrally coiled order Mimospirida and the family Onychochilidae, and Catalanispirinae n. subfam. is proposed. The large Lower Ordovician (Tremadocian) Pelecyogyra Ebbestad and Lefebvre, 2015 from Morocco and France is transferred to this new subfamily. The well-preserved initial growth stage of Catalanispira plattevillensis n. gen. n. sp. is cap-shaped, slightly asymmetrical, unusually large, and smooth, and represents either an unusually large embryonic shell (protoconch 1) or a larval shell (protoconch 2). It differs from the smaller protoconch described for the clisospirine Mimospira Koken in Koken and Perner, 1925, which might include a multiwhorled larval shell (protoconch 2). Mimospirids are dominantly Ordovician, and have been classified as untorted mollusks (only distantly related to gastropods), dextral hyperstrophic gastropods, or sinistral orthostrophic gastropods. Sinistral asymmetry already in the embryonic shell and lack of conclusive evidence for coiling direction, e.g., an operculum, could suggest that Catalanispira n. gen. or similar mimosprids were sinistral orthostrophic gastropods. Currently the group is therefore classified as a group of sinistral orthostrophic gastropods, unranked within the Gastropoda.

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A diverse Wuchiapingian brachiopod fauna, which contains 57 species in 28 genera, is described from the Shuizhutang Formation at the Liannan section, Guangdong province, southeastern China. Four new species Tyloplecta liannanensis n. sp., Linoproductus huananensis n. sp., Araxathyris minor n. sp., and Permophricodothyris flata n. sp. are proposed. From well-preserved Liannan specimens, characteristics of the shell microstructures in Permianella are revised, and different morphologies of muscle scars in Permophricodothyris are distinctly shown. Until now, only several Wuchiapingian brachiopod faunas have been found in South China. Compared with these faunas, the Liannan fauna shows much higher α diversity and is more like faunas from southeastern China than those from the Yangtze area in faunal composition. The Liannan fauna is dominated with Neochonetes, Transennatia, Orthothetina, Permophricodothyris, and Cathaysia, which are normally larger and more strongly ornamented than their Changhsingian counterparts. The Wuchiapingian brachiopods in South China are represented mainly by the Douling fauna and Shuizhutang fauna. The Douling fauna has relatively low diversity and presents the survival stage after the Guadalupian–Lopingian boundary crisis. The Shuizhutang fauna has a much higher diversity and more key Changhsingian taxa and shows a rapid radiation stage. Faunal compositions of the two faunas indicate that the initial recovery of brachiopods occurred mainly at the genus level followed by a more rapid radiation at both genus and species levels.

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Correct identification of fossil taxa is immensely important for dating molecular phylogenies and understanding when and how quickly modern biodiversity evolved. Fossils that are available for a clade of interest and can be directly incorporated in the phylogenetic analysis are considered primary sources of time calibration, whereas calibrations inferred from other studies are secondary (Arroyave et al., 2013). Studies of taxonomic groups that lack fossils must either expand their analyses to include fossilized outgroup lineages, use secondary calibrations, or use more problematic primary calibrations, e.g., vicariant geologic events. The use of vicariant geologic events to calibrate phylogenies poses the risk of circular reasoning, because the goal of many such studies is to determine how geologic events have affected diversification. Near et al. (2012) argued that fossil calibrations external to clades of interest, but still within the broader Actinopterygian (ray-finned fishes) tree, could be used as means of calibrating a generalized molecular clock, but internal calibrations are still valuable for refining such inferences (Arroyave et al., 2013).

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.

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