Reexamination of previously described conulariids has shown that the morphology of steeply pyramidal, generally four-sided conulariid exoskeletons is more complex than was realized by earlier generations of conulariid specialists (e.g., Van Iten, 1992a, 1992b; Jerre, 1994; Van Iten et al., 1996). Much of this complexity is expressed as variation in the anatomy of the corners and midlines (Van Iten, 1992a). In nearly all conulariids, the corners are sulcate, and in some genera (e.g., Archaeoconularia Bouček, 1939 and Pseudoconularia Bouček, 1939) the longitudinal center line, or midline, of the faces also is sulcate or is marked by a straight or zigzagged ridge. In the oldest known conulariid, Baccaconularia Hughes, Gunderson, and Weedon, 2000 (Cambrian: Furongian Series), the midlines are marked by a series of elongate invaginations. Corners and/or midlines of many other conulariids exhibit subtle or pronounced internal thickening (e.g., Van Iten, 1992a; Jerre, 1994). Most such conulariids exhibit one or two sets of longitudinal ridges, or carinae, with a single carina at each corner and/or a single carina or a pair of carinae at each midline. The height of the carinae varies considerably between species, ranging from less than one-fiftieth to over one-half the distance to the center of the exoskeletal cavity. Both corner and midline carinae may be continuous or (less frequently) seriated. Also, the abaxial edge of single midline carinae may have a single crest or (rarely) it may be weakly or strongly bifurcate.

George Jennings Hinde (1839–1918) was a pioneering geologist and paleontologist. Not only did he contribute greatly to the conodont research field by making innovative studies on Ordovician and Devonian faunas (see e.g., von Bitter, 2004), he was one of the first to describe scolecodonts, the jaws of polychaete worms. Scolecodont publications prior to Hinde's (1879, 1880, 1882, 1896) four contributions were few and merely included descriptions of one or a few specimens. Hinde was aware of the taxonomic affinity of these fossils, a discovery that he ascribed to the Swedish paleontologist Nils Peter Angelin (Hinde, 1882, p. 3–4). Moreover, he was first to investigate these fossils from the world-famous island of Gotland, Sweden (Hinde, 1882), from which most studies on Silurian scolecodonts subsequently have been carried out (Eriksson et al., 2004). Although he understood that the scolecodonts were parts of complex jaw apparatuses, he felt forced to use a single-element-based taxonomy (see Hinde, 1879, p. 373–374). He described close to a hundred “species” and varieties, and many of these names are still in use. Hence, Hinde's scolecodont heritage is still very much alive and his type collections are critical for the study of these fossils, particularly for resolving nomenclatural and taxonomic problems. In this note we discuss, and illustrate for the first time, the graptolites briefly mentioned by Hinde (1879) and describe the important stratigraphic information that they contribute to his Upper Ordovician scolecodont types.

In the autumn of 1912, the fossil collector Richard Markgraf, with financial support and direction from Bavarian paleontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, discovered the partial skeleton of a bizarre predatory dinosaur in Upper Cretaceous (early Cenomanian, ~97 Ma, see Ismail et al., 1989; Barakat et al., 1993; El Beialy, 1994, 1995; Nabil and Hussein, 1994; Ismail and Soliman, 2001; Ibrahim, 2002; Gradstein et al., 2005) rocks of the Bahariya Formation exposed in the Bahariya Oasis of western Egypt (Fig. 1, see also Sereno et al., 1998; Nothdurft et al., 2002). This gigantic theropod, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus Stromer, 1915, possessed highly derived cranial and vertebral features sufficiently distinct for it to be designated as the nominal genus of the clade Spinosauridae (Stromer, 1915, 1936). Spinosaurids, currently definitively known only from Europe, South America, and Africa, are important because of the scarcity of Cretaceous Gondwanan tetrapod fossils (see Krause et al., 1999, 2003; Carrano et al., 2002; Lamanna et al., 2002). Moreover, fossils of Spinosaurus Stromer, 1915 and other spinosaurids are significant because of controversy surrounding the postulated paleoecology of these taxa (see discussions in Charig and Milner, 1997; Sereno et al., 1998; Sues et al., 2002). Questions related to spinosaurid paleoecology are particularly important in the Bahariya Formation, where Spinosaurus appears to have shared its habitat (see Stromer, 1936; Smith et al., 2001) with at least two other theropods in the size range of Tyrannosaurus Osborn, 1905 (Bahariasaurus Stromer, 1934 and Carcharodontosaurus Stromer, 1931). Unfortunately, the holotype and only known indisputable specimen of S. aegyptiacus (BSP 1912 VIII 19) was lost during the night of 24/25 April 1944 in a British bombing raid of Munich (Nothdurft et al., 2002). The attack severely damaged the building (dating to ca. 1583, Nöhbauer, 1987) that housed the Paläontologische Staatssammlung München and destroyed most of Stromer's Bahariya collection (see Appendix 1). Since 1944, new spinosaurid taxa have been described (see Charig and Milner, 1986; Martill et al., 1996; Sereno et al., 1998; Sues et al., 2002) and additional material has been referred to Spinosaurus (e.g., Buffetaut, 1989, 1992; Russell, 1996; Taquet and Russell, 1998; Benton et al., 2000; Buffetaut and Ouaja, 2002), some of it questionably. However, definitive S. aegyptiacus material, or information regarding the original specimen of Spinosaurus, has not been forthcoming.

The evolutionary history of the living African rodent families is a topic of considerable debate, yet it is generally agreed that the modern cane rats (Thryonomys Fitzinger, 1867) and dassie rats (Petromus Smith, 1831) have an evolutionary history within the infraorder Phiomorpha (e.g., Wood, 1968). Phiomorphs possess hystricognathous mandibular morphology, multiserial incisor enamel, and hystricomorphous attachment of the masseteric musculature (e.g., Lavocat, 1978; Holroyd, 1994). In his initial work on the group, Wood (1968) placed all phiomorph taxa into a single family, and named a handful of morphologically diverse species based mainly on size. Lavocat (1978) later revised the taxonomy of the group, raising many of the differences among species to the family level. More recently, Holroyd (1994) observed that these contrasting views likely stemmed from the fact that Wood's phiomorph work emphasized the overall similarity of Paleogene specimens from the Fayum of Egypt, whereas Lavocat endeavored to explain the diverse Miocene rodent faunas from East Africa, envisioning that each of the Miocene forms had an ancestor among the Paleogene taxa. In this paper we adopt Holroyd's (1994) revised version of family-level relationships among the phiomorphs.