Preliminary experiments with a confocal microscope (Sarastro 2000®) demonstrate its value in micropaleontology for photography and three-dimensional morphometric studies. High-quality images of objects in the size range of 100 to 2,000 μm can be obtained without application of nonremovable coating. Images can easily be electronically converted to stereopairs or displayed as single images. Images are in focus throughout and are superior to light photographs. Numerical data (x, y, and z coordinates) in almost any desired amount can be extracted from enough points on the visible surface to provide for the construction of a detailed topographic map of the surface. All of this can be done without manipulating the specimen once it has been mounted.

Various workers have assigned Atrypa acutiplicata Conrad, 1841, to a number of leptocoeliid genera. Restudy of specimens previously examined by Boucot and Rehmer (1977) as part of a study of the community paleoecology of brachiopods of the Emsian and Eifelian strata of eastern North America has shown that A. acutiplicata does not belong to any existing genus of leptocoeliid. Therefore, the new genus Atlanticocoelia is proposed, with A. acutiplicata as the type species, for leptocoeliid brachiopods with a small, knoblike cardinal process, a brachial valve of moderate convexity, a broad sulcus, strong plications, subparallel dorsal adductor scars, and cordate pedicle diductor scars. Atlanticocoelia occurs in benthic assemblage 4 to 5 communities of the Emsian through Eifelian Appohimchi Province of the Eastern Americas Realm.

Diverse silicified trilobite faunas from the lower Wenlock to lower Ludlow of the Cape Phillips Formation, central Canadian Arctic, have been the subject of works by Perry and Chatterton (1977), Chatterton and Perry (1979), Adrain (1994), and Adrain and Edgecombe (1995, and in press). The present work describes a very minor component of these faunas, the family Phacopidae, which is nevertheless of considerable biogeographic interest.