The Calcare di Base Formation is a part of the Rossano Basin characterizing the Foreland Basin System of northeastern Calabria. Messinian argillaceous marls from the Calcare di Base Formation have been studied to characterize the sedimentary evolution of this formation during the post-orogenic phases of the Calabria–Peloritani Arc. The mineralogical assemblage of the argillaceous marls is dominated by phyllosilicates (illite, chlorite, illite/smectite mixed layers and traces of kaolinite), carbonate minerals (calcite, aragonite and dolomite), quartz and traces of feldspars (both K-feldspars and plagioclase), gypsum and celestine. The palaeoweathering index records changes at the source, reflecting variations in the tectonic regime as shown in the A–CN–K plot, where the studied samples describe a trend typical of a source area in which active tectonism allows erosion of all zones within weathering profiles developed on source rocks. The studied samples are derived from an environment in which non-steady-state weathering conditions prevailed. This trend could record deformational events that affected the Mediterranean area during the Miocene. The Th/Sc versus Zr/Sc ratios and Al–Zr–Ti plot suggest that the samples likely record a recycling effect from their basement rocks. The geochemical proxies of these samples suggest a provenance from a mainly felsic source. The Messinian argillaceous marls record that deposition probably occurred in a semi-closed marine environment mainly subject to hypersalinity with local episodes of meteoric water influx, during a period characterized by persistent dry and warm/arid conditions alternating with relatively wet conditions.

The Early Palaeozoic Shuanggou ophiolite is the best-preserved part of the Ailaoshan ophiolite belt. The microgabbros (basaltic dykes) and basalts (basaltic lavas) show distinct characteristics in geochemistry, implying that their genetic mechanisms are different. With Al2O3 contents ranging from 14.7% to 17.0%, the microgabbros belong to low-alumina type. They exhibit normal mid-ocean-ridge basalt (N-MORB) -like trace elemental characteristics with positive εNd(t) values (9.7–11.6) and slightly variable (87Sr/86Sr)i ratios (0.7036–0.7046). In contrast, the basalts have high Al2O3 contents (19.5–23.2%), therefore belonging to high-alumina type. A plagioclase-accumulation model is used to account for the high alumina contents. Moreover, the basalts have enriched MORB (E-MORB) -like trace element characteristics with lower εNd(t) values (6.4–8.0) and (87Sr/86Sr)i ratios (0.7032–0.7036). Their incompatible element ratios exhibit linear correlation with the isotopic data, which is probably related to the contribution of a mixed lithosphere–asthenosphere source. In summary, a two-stage model is proposed to explain the formation of the Shuanggou ophiolite: (1) at the continent–ocean transition stage, the basalts were generated by low-degree partial melting of the mixed mantle near a slow-spreading embryonic centre; and (2) at the mature stage of the Ailaoshan Ocean, the microgabbros were produced by moderate-degree partial melting of the depleted asthenospheric mantle.

We amend the taxonomy and provide new anatomical information on the hadrosaurid dinosaur Saurolophus morrisi (upper Maastrichtian Moreno Formation, central California, USA) derived from full preparation of the referred skull roof. The cranial morphology of this species is distinct enough to justify the new combination Augustynolophus morrisi gen. nov. The morphology of the nasals and surrounding cranial bones indicates that A. morrisi sported a solid nasal crest ending in an elongate triangular plate that extended above the skull roof. Autapomorphies include a crescentic base of the frontal caudodorsal process and extension of the process caudal to the frontal ‘dome’; distal end of nasal crest with knob-like process inflected rostrally; circumnarial depression lightly incised and weakly emarginated, adjacent to caudolateral margin of nasal and occupying two-thirds the width of lateral surface of distal region of crest; and caudal surface of distal nasal crest subrectangular. We formally establish the new tribe Saurolophini consisting of Prosaurolophus, Augustynolophus and Saurolophus. Saurolophin synapomorphies include a premaxilla with broad arcuate contour of rostrolateral region of thin everted oral margin and flat and steeply inclined occlusal surface of dentary dental battery, among other characters. Saurolophin crests evolved towards increasing caudodorsal length, along with caudal extension of the circumnarial fossa and involvement into the crest of adjacent facial elements. Augustynolophus is the second described genus of North American late Maastrichtian hadrosaurids. Its recognition implies a greater diversity among late Maastrichtian dinosaur faunas than previously recognized and is congruent with hypotheses of endemism and/or provinciality during Late Cretaceous time.

The Palaeozoic rocks of the Dingle Peninsula provide a record of the evolution of the Caledonides, Acadides and Variscides. The succession ranges from Early Ordovician deep-water sediments, through Silurian shallow marine to non-marine sediments and volcanic rocks to an Old Red Sandstone (ORS) succession topped by Carboniferous marine shales. Comparison of structural styles in the unconformity-bounded groups, together with a detailed analysis of fault zones, allows the tectonic history to be deduced. The older rocks record Caledonian processes on the margin of Avalonia during Early Ordovician time and convergence then soft collision with Laurentia during Silurian time. The Dingle Basin was developed during the late Silurian – Early Devonian transtension in the Iapetus suture zone and was inverted in the latest Emsian Acadian orogenic episode. Post-Dingle Group ORS groups in the north of the peninsula were deposited in a syn-rift footwall block to the main Munster Basin. The Acadian transpressional and Munster Basin extensional structures were reactivated or overprinted in the Variscan deformation such that Acadian folds are transected by Variscan cleavage in both plan and vertical views. After Iapetus closure, changes in the tectonic regime are believed to be a result of adjustments in the geometry of subduction of the Rheic Ocean.

The olistostromes form two belts within the Pieniny Klippen Belt (PKB) in the Northern Carpathians. They mark an early stage of the development of the accretionary prism. The first belt was formed during Late Cretaceous time as a result of subduction of the southern part of the Alpine Tethys. The fore-arc basin originated along this subduction zone, with synorogenic flysch deposits. Huge olistoliths deposited within the Cretaceous–Palaeogene flysch of the Złatne Basin, presently located in the vicinity of the Haligovce village (eastern Slovakia), provide a good example of the fore-arc olistostrome setting. The second belt is related to the movement of the accretionary prism, which overrode the Czorsztyn Ridge during Late Cretaceous–Paleocene time. The destruction of this ridge led to the formation of submarine slumps and olistoliths along the southern margin of the Magura Basin. The Upper Cretaceous – Paleocene flysch sequences of the Magura Basin constitute the matrix of olistostromes. The large Homole block in the Jaworki village represents the best example of the Magura Basin olistolith. Numerous examples of olistoliths were documented in western Slovakia, Poland, eastern Slovakia and Ukraine. The olistostromes formed within the Złatne and Magura basins orginated during the tectonic process, forming the olistostrome belts along the strike of the PKB structure.

Marine invertebrate borings are very rare in crystalline rocks, providing evidence of particular strategies producers use to colonise these unfavourable substrates. In the Sorbas Basin (Almería, southern Spain), Upper Miocene transgressive successions contain blocks of metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Nevado–Filabride Complex of the Betic Cordillera. Ichnological analysis of the embedded blocks shows the presence of two types of macroborings located in gneiss boulders, revealed to be an extraordinary case worldwide. The most abundant are regular hemispherical depressions ascribed reservedly to the well-known, mostly bivalve boring Gastrochaenolites. The second one is a pouch-like depression, tapering downward, elliptical in outline, and clearly different to other non-circular-in-outline, pouch-shaped macroborings. Thus, a new ichnogenus and ichnospecies Cuenulites sorbasensis has been defined. According to the overall shape, an endolithic or semi-endolithic bivalve using chemical means to bore is suggested as the tracemaker. Colonisation could be determined by sea-level coastal dynamics, with decreasing energy during advancing transgression allowing boring, which was then stopped due to supply of fine-grained sediment that killed the borers.

A Lower Devonian silicified ostracod fauna has been recovered from limestone interbeds in the Büyükdere section of the Kozyatağı Member of the Pendik Formation. Forty-one species belonging to 33 genera have been recognized. Twenty-three are already known, and 15 are described in open nomenclature. One genus and three species (Omerliella rectangulata gen. et sp. nov., Microcheilinella istanbulensis sp. nov. and Roundyella goekchenae sp. nov.) are described. Silicified larval stages of trilobites, agglutinated foraminifers and conodonts co-occur with the ostracods. The ostracod assemblages are ‘mixed faunas’, between the epineritic Eifelian Mega-Assemblage, representative of high-energy environments, and the basinal Thuringian Mega-Assemblage, representative of low-energy environments. The conodont faunas of the Pendik Formation represent the serotinus, patulus and partitus biozones of the late Emsian – earliest Eifelian. The Emsian ostracods of NW Turkey show numerous species-level links between the Western Pontides (Istanbul Terrane) and assemblages of contemporaneous faunas of the Cantabrian Mountains (Spain), Morocco and Thuringia (Germany), and of similar biofacies. This supports the notion that the Istanbul Terrane, Armorican terrane-collage and northern margins of Gondwana were in geographical proximity in late Early Devonian time.

The Diguva Sonaba area (Vishakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh, South India) represents part of the granulite-facies terrain of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt. The Precambrian metamorphic rocks of the area predominantly consist of mafic granulite (±garnet), khondalite, leptynite (±garnet, biotite), charnockite, enderbite, calc-granulite, migmatic gneisses and sapphirine–spinel-bearing granulite. The latter rock type occurs as lenticular bodies in khondalite, leptynite and calc-granulite. Textural relations, such as corroded inclusions of biotite within garnet and orthopyroxene, resorbed hornblende within pyroxenes, and coarse-grained laths of sillimanite, presumably pseudomorphs after kyanite, provide evidence of either an earlier episode of upper-amphibolite-facies metamorphism or they represent relics of the prograde path that led to granulite-facies metamorphism. In the sapphirine–spinel-bearing granulite, osumilite was stable in addition to sapphirine, spinel and quartz during the thermal peak of granulite-facies metamorphism but the assemblage was later replaced by Crd–Opx–Qtz–Kfs-symplectite and a variety of reaction coronas during retrograde overprint. Variable amounts of biotite or biotite+quartz symplectite replaced orthopyroxene, cordierite and Opx–Crd–Kfs–Qtz-symplectite at an even later retrograde stage. Peak metamorphic conditions of c. 1000°C and c. 12 kbar were computed by isopleths of XMg in garnet and XAl in orthopyroxene. The sequence of reactions as deduced from the corona and symplectite assemblages, together with petrogenetic grid and pseudosection modelling, records a clockwise P–T evolution. The P–T path is characteristically T-convex suggesting an isothermal decompression path and reflects rapid uplift followed by cooling of a tectonically thickened crust.

The uppermost metavolcanic layer of the Cambro-Ordovician Ollo de Sapo Formation, the largest accumulation of pre-Variscan igneous rocks in the Iberian Peninsula, have been dated in its northernmost part using U–Pb SHRIMP-RG zircon age techniques at 479.0 ± 4.7 Ma. The age obtained is the youngest age found so far in the metavolcanic facies of Ollo de Sapo Formation and represents the cessation of the rifting-related Cambro-Ordovician Ollo de Sapo volcanism at the northernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula. Our results show that the Cambro-Ordovician volcanism in the NW of the Iberian Peninsula is not as short-lived as previously thought and confirm the correlation between the Cambro-Ordovician volcanic sequences that crop out in the Central Iberian Zone and the French Southern Armorican Massif. Finally, our study suggests that the cessation of the Cambro-Ordovician volcanism along the Ibero-Armorican Arc was synchronic or, less probably, slightly diachronic with younger ages towards the north (in present-day geographical coordinates).

The Weeks Formation preserves a diverse, yet largely undescribed, exceptionally preserved fauna of late Guzhangian age. Here I describe Notchia weugi gen. et sp. nov., a new arthropod characterized by a short cephalon, a trunk with 12 tergites and weakly differentiated into two morphological regions, and a spine-bearing rectangular telson. This combination of characters is incompatible with its assignment to any known groups. The new taxon also adds to examples of convergent evolution of ramified digestive glands in arthropods, possibly as an adaptation to infrequent feeding.

Burlingia balangensis sp. nov. from the lower Cambrian of South China represents the earliest species of this genus, and suggests that the genus may have originated in South China. A revision of the genus shows that B. primitiva and B. obscura can be used in order to indentify the base of the Cambrian Stage 5 when other trilobites are absent because their last appearance datum (LAD) coincides with the first appearance datum (FAD) of Oryctocephalus indicus. Available palaeogeographic and palaeoclimatic models suggest five major palaeocurrents during Cambrian times which could control the migration patterns of the Burlingia clade from South China to Baltica.

High-resolution SIMS U–Pb dating of metamorphic zircons of the TTG gneisses, gneissic granitoid and amphibolites of the Lushan terrane, Taihua metamorphic complex, suggests that the metamorphism had taken place at least as early as ~1.96–1.86 Ga. These new dates, along with reference data, demonstrate that the southern and middle terranes of the Trans-North China Orogen had been involved in the continent–continent collision between the Western Block and the Eastern Block of the North China Craton. This orogenic process started as early as 1.96 Ga and lasted as late as 1.80 Ga.

The robust spines and sclerites of the early to middle Cambrian ‘mollusc’ Wiwaxia are ubiquitous in suitably preserved deposits, but are strikingly absent from the Chengjiang Lagerstätte (Cambrian Stage 3, Yunnan Province, SW China). Here we provide the first record of Wiwaxia sclerites from this rich deposit, extending the record of the genus to the earliest Cambrian Series 2. This reinforces the cosmopolitan distribution of this iconic Cambrian lophotrochozoan and demonstrates the strong faunal continuity that unites distant Cambrian Lagerstätten.