Limestone beds intercalated within a succession of sandstones, siltstones, and shales of the subsurface Deadwood Formation, cored in two wells in Alberta and Saskatchewan, yielded twelve species assigned to eight genera of organophosphatic brachiopods (Subphylum Linguliformea). The nine species recovered from the Alberta well are Marjuman (late Middle to early Late Cambrian) in age. Three of these species, Neotreta davidi Popov, Berg-Madsen, and Holmer, 1994; Picnotreta debilis Henderson and MacKinnon, 1981; and Stilpnotreta magna Henderson and MacKinnon, 1981, are associated with the Mindyallan (early Late Cambrian) of Queensland, and are previously unknown from Laurentia. This brachiopod fauna occurs with a diverse fauna of paraconodont species. The Saskatchewan well yielded three species of Linnarssonella, belonging to the upper Steptoean to the lower Sunwaptan (middle Late Cambrian). One new subfamily, Neotretinae, is erected, and two new species, Rhondellina albertensis, and Linnarssonella tubicula are described. Linnarssonella elongata Bell, 1941, is reinstated as a valid species. This fauna occurs with a diverse fauna of paraconodont species and is overlain, 226 feet higher, by conodonts of the Early Sunwaptan Proconodontus Zone.

This paper constitutes the first monographical study of the rich brachiopod faunas from the Early Ordovician Suri and Molles Formations of the central Famatina Range, which form a nearly continuous, more than 2,000 m thick succession of fossiliferous clastic and volcaniclastic rocks. Conodonts from the brachiopod-rich levels of the upper third of the Suri Formation and Los Molles Formation indicate the upper part of the Oepikodus evae Biozone (mid-Arenig). The systematic study of brachiopod faunas reveals the presence of 22 species belonging to 19 genera, three of which are new. The new genera recognized are the orthid Suriorthis, the hesperonomiid Mollesella, and the rectostrophiid Trigonostrophia. The following 12 new species and subspecies are described and illustrated: the clitambonitoidean Tritoechia mollesensis; the skenidioideans Crossiskenidium? stelzneri and Skenidioides kayseri; the orthoideans Paralenorthis suriensis, Paralenorthis riojanus brevis, Panderina? ambigua, Productorthis angulensis, Hesperonomiella arcuata, and Monorthis transversa; the plectorthoideans Ffynnonia famatinensis and Desmorthis? bifurcata; and the porambonitoidean Rugostrophia protoandina. Associated forms are Tritoechia sp., Pinatotoechia acantha Benedetto, 2001b; Protoskenidioides cf. revelata Williams, 1974; Hesperonomia orientalis Benedetto, 1998a; Paralenorthis riojanus (Levy and Nullo, 1973), Famatinorthis turneri (Levy and Nullo, 1973); and Camerella sp. Brachiopods from the Famatina Range display strong affinities with Welsh and Central Newfoundland, Maine and New Brunswick volcanic assemblages forming with them a statistically well defined Celtic cluster. Faunal evidence suggests that the Famatina volcanic belt continues northward into the western Puna belt.

The late Early Devonian to Middle Devonian Bird Fiord Formation, which is up to 900 m thick, is exposed along an extensive outcrop belt from stretches from Ellesmere Island to Bathurst Island in Arctic Canada. This formation, which encompasses sediments that accumulated in sabkha, deltaic, and shelf settings, is divided into six members. The Blubber Point, Baad Fiord, Norwegian Bay, and Cardigan Strait members, which include sediments that formed on an open marine shelf, are characterized by a diverse biota of brachiopods, mollusks, corals, trilobites, and sponges. The Cross Bay and Grise Fiord members, which encompass sediments that formed in a sabkha and delta plain settings, respectively, are generally devoid of fossils.

A collection of 47,026 brachiopods, which came from 140 collections made at 34 locations throughout the outcrop belt of the Bird Fiord Formation, contains 22 species of brachiopods that belong to 21 genera. This biota includes six new species: Gypidula mega, Spinatrypa (Isospinatrypa) parva, Desquamatia (Independatrypa) fortis, Nucleospira stelcki, Warrenella grinnellensis, and Cranaena briceae. Four genera (Arcticastrophia Li and Jones, 2002, Borealistrophia Li and Jones, 2002, Grinnellathyris Li and Jones, 2002, and Costacranaena Johnson and Perry, 1976) and 16 species of brachiopods are endemic to the Arctic Canada. Conversely, the fauna also includes European elements such as Nucleospira lens (Schnur), Spinatrypa (Isospinatrypa), and Warrenella. These taxa may indicate that there was some communication between the Canadian Arctic and Europe during Middle Devonian.

Study of the shell features of Givetian and Frasnian spiriferid brachiopods attributed to the genus Cyrtospirifer shows that the type species C. verneuili has micro-ornament consisting of fine concentric growth lines, radial capillae, with microspines arising from some capillae, spine bases appear to extend into the primary shell layer. Its dorsal interior features a pseudoseptum supporting the cardinalia. Micro-ornament of Cyrtospirifer varies widely and is a useful criterion for characterization of species of the genus. Most Frasnian species retained in the genus have micropustulate shells. Two late Givetian and Frasnian phylogenetic species groups of Cyrtospirifer are recognized based on similarities of shell form and external and internal shell features. Species of the verneuilisyringothyriformis group have transverse alate shells, and are the most abundant and widespread group in Frasnian deposits worldwide. The verneuiliformis group includes the oldest known species of Cyrtospirifer with narrow hinges and more inflated ventral valves where shell width is close to or equal to length. The oldest Cyrtospirifer originated in western Europe during the late Givetian, and subsequently migrated at different times during the Frasnian into other shelf areas of Eurasia, North America and China. The initial migration of Cyrtospirifer into tropical and subtropical shelf settings in North America coincided with the middle Frasnian eustatic sea level rise of Devonian Transgressive-Regressive (T-R) cycle IIc of Johnson and others. A second late Frasnian dispersal from western Canada to subtropical carbonate and clastic shelves in the southwestern and central U.S. coincided with the initial sea level rise of T-R cycle IId of Johnson and others. The Frasnian species Cyrtospirifer glaucus Crickmay, 1952a (middle Frasnian of western Canada) is the type species for Regelia Crickmay, 1952b, and is considered a valid genus, and is not a synonym of C. chemungensis (Conrad, 1842) as previously interpreted by some authors. Regelia differs from Cyrtospirifer in the absence of a delthyrial plate, complete in-filling of the delthyrial cavity by secondary shell material, its simpler rod-like teeth, and its fewer medial sinal shell plications. Species of Regelia are restricted to the middle to late Frasnian of North America.

A new genus Ibergirhynchia, a member of the rhynchonellide superfamily Dimerelloidea, is described for the species Terebratula contraria Roemer, 1850, from Early Carboniferous deposits of the Harz Mountains, Germany. Ibergirhynchia contraria is from a monospecific brachiopod limestone that formed on top of the drowned Devonian Iberg Reef which persisted as a seamount during Famennian and Early Carboniferous times. Ibergirhynchia contraria is considered a cold seep-related brachiopod based on this locality. Such seep associations have been observed for Mesozoic representatives of the rhynchonellide superfamily Dimerelloidea. Ibergirhynchia is considered the first Paleozoic representative of the family Rhynchonellinidae. Ibergirhynchia resembles Dzieduszyckia externally and may be derived from this dimerelloid.

Hyolith assemblages from Middle and Upper Ordovician strata in Estonia include representatives of Hyolithes Eichwald as H. gerhardi new species and H. burgessi new species, and one assigned to that genus with question. Dorsolinevitus Syssoiev is known from D. marri new species, D. dispar? (Holm, 1893) and D. textilis? (Holm, 1893); one questionable species of that genus is left in open nomenclature. Sulcavitus Syssoiev is represented by one unidentifiable species, and one incompletely preserved orthothecid constitutes the first member of that group to be recorded from Estonia. Despite the overall paucity of identifiable hyoliths from Estonia, several of the same genera are now known to be present in Estonia and Sweden, reinforcing the notion that the hyoliths of Baltica constitute a distinct biogeographic province with limited mixing of faunas from elsewhere.

The Upper Albian Desmoceras species of Japan are described, based on material from the Yezo Supergroup in Hokkaido, north Japan, and from the Fujikawa Formation in Shikoku, southwest Japan. Based on comparative analysis of morphologic variation and shell growth of relevant specimens, we assign the present material to two species: Desmoceras (Desmoceras) latidorsatum (Michelin, 1838) and Desmoceras (Pseudouhligella) poronaicum Yabe, 1904. Japanese examples of the latter species have been previously referred to “Desmoceras (Pseudouhligella) dawsoni,” a Canadian species present on Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, but not represented in the Japanese Islands. Desmoceras (Pseudouhligella) poronaicum is also known from British Columbia.

The subgenus Pseudouhligella presumably originated in the eastern Pacific during the Late Albian and subsequently migrated to the western Pacific during latest Albian to earliest Cenomanian time. Desmoceras (D.) latidorsatum is a Tethyan form; its presence in the Upper Albian of the North Pacific probably reflects a northward excursion of warm-water currents from the tropical region during Late Albian time.

Euphylax feldmanni new species from the late Eocene Hoko River Formation, northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington, represents the first occurrence of Euphylax in pre-Oligocene strata, the earliest fossil record for the subfamily Podophthalminae, and the first record of the genus from the eastern North Pacific. This small, aberrant crab is one of 26 described species of decapod crustaceans from an unusual allochthonous invertebrate assemblage of the upper Eocene Hoko River Formation conglomerates at Kydikabbit Point, on the Makah Indian Nation, northwestern Olympic Peninsula, Washington, U.S.A. Species of Euphylax live today in the Pacific Ocean from Baja California south to Peru and Chile, and have been found as fossils from the Pleistocene of Jamaica, the Miocene of Costa Rica, Brazil, and Haiti, and questionably from Malaysia and Japan. The discovery of a fossil species of Euphylax from the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. greatly expands the paleobiogeography of the genus.

Two new genera, Poliellaites and Piochella, and six new species, Eokochaspis? cabinensis, Nyella? plana, Poliellaites gloriosa, Piochella peasleensis, Poliella ovala, and Stephenaspis highlandensis, are described from the Susan Duster Limestone and Log Cabin members, Pioche Shale. Kochaspis Resser, 1935, and Kochaspis liliana (Walcott, 1886) are redescribed based on new material. In addition, several species from the Pioche Shale, that are not addressed in our previous reports are discussed in relationship to existing species and local occurrence. The trilobite diversity of the Poliella denticulata Biozone (new) within the study area is 17 genera and 35 species, occurring in five faunal assemblages.

A geometric analysis of lophophore shape and arrangement in the fenestrate dendroid graptolite genus Dictyonema reveals that the shape of the zooid domain in the majority of Dictyonema species colonies is highly elliptical, with the long axis of the ellipse perpendicular to the proximodistal axis of the stipe. A complex lophophore, bilaterally symmetrical and consisting of two tentaculated arms that are laterally directed and perpendicular to the stipe axis, provides the best geometric solution to completely filling the elliptical zooid domain seen in the majority of Dictyonema species.

Working under the assumption that fenestrate graptolites, like fenestrate bryozoans, needed to form a continuous filtering surface with contact between adjacent lophophores, two optimum close-parking models exist for lophophores with elliptical zooid domains: either a proximodistal-row arrangement or a lateral-row arrangement of the lophophores. Of the two possible geometries, the most probable close-packing arrangement of hypothetical biplumed lophophores within the fenestrate graptolite meshwork is in proximodistal rows.

A nematocerous fly family known previously only from one species and specimen from the Upper Jurassic of Karatau, Kazakhstan, Archizelmiridae is expanded here to include additional records preserved as compression fossils and ones in amber. The compressions are from the Upper Jurassic of Shar-Teg, Mongolia and Lower Cretaceous of Baissa, Transbaikal, with a new species, Archizelmira baissa, from Baissa. Particularly significant are three finely preserved new species and genera in ambers from the Cretaceous Period: Zelmiarcha lebanensis (Lebanon: Lower Aptian), Archimelzira americana (New Jersey: Turonian), and Burmazelmira aristica (Burma [Myanmar]: mid-Cretaceous). The latter two species interestingly possess stylate antennae, those of Burmazelmira being the only aristate antennae in the order Diptera outside the suborder Brachycera. A cladogram is presented for the relationships among archizelmirid species, cladistic rank of which correlates with stratigraphic age. Transformation series of the antennal flagellum in Archizelmiridae corresponds with one recently hypothesized for the Brachycera, wherein the style and arista are derived from the apical flagellomere(s). The family appears to be a member of the extant group Sciaroidea, which includes fungus gnats and gall midges, though precise relationships remain unclear.

The stratigraphic utility of small marine acritarchs in the Neogene has been known for more than a decade (e.g., de Vernal and Mudie, 1989). Their potential for biostratigraphy in the Cretaceous is also well known, and was elegantly elucidated by Habib and Knapp (1982) in a detailed scanning electron microscope (SEM) study from the western North Atlantic. Habib and Knapp erected 12 new acritarch genera including the acanthomorph genus Nannobarbophora and its three species N. barbata (the name of the type), N. pistilla, and N. platforma. A diagnostic feature of Nannobarbophora is the presence of spinules concentrated on, or restricted to, the surface of distally closed processes. Excystment is by a simple linear split (Habib and Knapp, 1982, p. 347).

Since the description of the first cycloid from the Carboniferous of Yorkshire, England (Phillips, 1835) the Cycloidea have been placed in many different groups within the Arthropoda. These include agnostid trilobites (Phillips, 1835), xiphosure merostomes (Packard, 1872; Oosterink, 1978), limuloid-like crustaceans (Woodward, 1905), decapod brachyurans (Trauth, 1918), branchiurans (Hopwood, 1925), copepods (Clark, 1989), and maxillopodan crustaceans (Schram et al., 1997).

In their monograph Review of the Pelycosauria, Romer and Price (1940), proposed that the earliest synapsids (“pelycosaurs”) were cosmopolitan, despite the observation that amniotes appeared to be restricted to the paleotropics during the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian (290–282 Ma). Romer and Price (1940) accounted for the scarcity of terrestrial tetrapods, including “pelycosaurs,” in Lower Permian beds elsewhere to the absence of coeval continental deposits beyond North America and Europe. Indeed, most workers recognized a geographical and temporal gap between Permo-Carboniferous “pelycosaurs” and therapsid synapsids. Recent research has confirmed that varanopid and caseid “pelycosaurs” were components of therapsid-dominated Late Permian faunas preserved in Russia and South-Africa (Tatarinov and Eremina, 1975; Reisz, 1986; Reisz et al., 1998; Reisz and Berman, 2001).

During the field season of 1870, F. V. Hayden collected a number of sandstone blocks that contained the remains of a large fossil lizard (Middle Eocene Bridger Formation, Sweetwater County, Wyoming). Though mostly unprepared, the visible bones were described by Leidy (1870) as Saniwa ensidens (USNM 2185; holotype). Fifty years later all the blocks associated with USNM 2185 were prepared prior to Gilmore's (1922) more complete description of Saniwa ensidens and his assignment of the taxon to the Varanoidea. Gilmore (1922) notes that the skeletal remains in the blocks were partially disarticulated to dissociated despite the excellent articulation of some components (e.g., palatal elements and right and left maxillary fragments [Gilmore, 1922, p. 809; pl. 1). Gilmore (1928) altered the diagnosis of Saniwa ensidens (USNM 2185) by adding characterizations of a premaxilla, right and left anterior maxillary fragments, and anterior tips of the dentaries. Gilmore (1928, p. 57) stated that these missing elements were found after further preparation of the blocks when the type specimen was mounted for display.

In 1956 two fossil specimens were exposed in concretions associated with two crushed body chambers of the orthoconic nautiloid Rayonnoceras sp. recovered from the Fayetteville Shale (Chesterian, upper Mississippian) of northern Arkansas. The two specimens were subsequently described as a new genus and species of demosponge, Vintonia doris Nitecki and Rigby and placed in the new family Vintoniidae (Nitecki and Rigby, 1966). The specimens were described as silicified. Nitecki and Rigby's analysis, based on the presence of an assumed skeletal net resembling the spongin net of Recent sponges, suggested that the specimens were demosponges with sycon structure. The “net” was considered spongin because of its geometric pattern and cellular appearance. That interpretation led to the placement of the specimens in the Order Keratosida despite the presence of an apparently well-developed ectosomal region, a feature that is not common in the Keratosida (Nitecki and Rigby, 1966).