Samples from the Huns Limestone Member, Urusis Formation, Nama Group, at two adjacent localities in southern Namibia contain thin foliose to arched, sheet-like carbonate crusts that are 100–500 µm thick and up to 5 cm in lateral dimension. Morphologic, petrographic, and geochemical evidence supports the interpretation of these delicate crusts as biogenic, most likely the remains of calcified encrusting metaphytes. The original sediments of the fossiliferous samples contained aragonitic encrusting algae, botryoidal aragonite cements, and an aragonite mud groundmass. Spherulites within the precursor mud could represent bacterially induced mineral growths or the concretions of marine rivularian cyanobacteria. Original textures were severely disrupted during the diagenetic transition of aragonite to low-magnesian calcite, but some primary structures remain discernible as ghosts in the neomorphic mosaic. Gross morphology, original aragonite mineralogy, and hypobasal calcification indicate that the crusts are similar to late Paleozoic phylloid algae and extant peyssonnelid red algae. Structures interpreted as possible conceptacles also suggest possible affinities with the Corallinaceae.

Two species of Cloudina, interpreted as the remains of a shelly metazoan, are also known from limestones in the Nama Group. It is possible, therefore, that skeletalization in metaphytes and animals arose nearly simultaneously near the end of the Proterozoic Eon.

Scanning electron microscopy of the architecture of Rotalina inermis Terquem, 1882, the type-species of the genus Pararotalia Le Calvez, 1949, and of Rotalia mexicana Nuttall, 1928, the type-species of the genus Neorotalia Bermudez, 1952, reveals that both taxa have in common: 1) an umbilical bowl closed by either a single or a compound umbilical plug; 2) an interiomarginal extraumbilical aperture, restricted by a toothplate that protrudes with a free edge into the aperture and forms an umbilical spiral canal; and 3) a septal flap and intraseptal interlocular spaces. Rotalia mexicana, however, also possesses an enveloping canal-system, similar to that found in the Calcarinidae. For this reason Neorotalia must be regarded as a valid distinct genus, not synonymous with Pararotalia, as proposed by some authors. Calcarina calcar d'Orbigny, 1839, variously placed by authors in Rotalia Lamarck, 1804, in Pararotalia Le Calvez, 1949, and lately again in Calcarina d'Orbigny, 1826, is shown to possess the same basic architecture as Neorotalia and is placed, consequently, into this latter genus. Irregular supplementary apertures occurring in N. calcar are not considered of generic value and neither are they regarded as indicating a relationship with Nautilus spengleri Gmelin, 1788, the type-species of Calcarina. The latter, although characterized by a complex enveloping canal-system, possesses primary multiple interioareal main apertures, surrounded by thick rims, as well as a small umbilical plate, but lacks a toothplate with a free edge. For comparison, Pararotalia spinigera (Le Calvez, 1949) and Neorotalia viennoti (Greig, 1935) were also studied. The subfamily Pararotaliinae Reiss, 1963, is emended to include the canal-system as a characteristic feature. A glossary of selected terms is appended.

Annectina viriosa, a new species of Ammodiscidae (Foraminiferida), is described from Recent brackish ponds on a salt flat adjacent to Lake Winnipegosis, Manitoba. Colonization of the ponds was probably by avian transport. The distinct morphotype is either the result of an allopatric speciation event within the last 5,000 years or it is a previously undescribed species of shallow-water Annectina from nearby Hudson Bay. It is also possible that recovered specimens are previously unrecognized ecophenotypic variants of some known species produced by unknown hostile environmental factors within the pond ecosystem. The latter hypothesis is difficult to test without extensive biological culturing. The large number of phenotypically stable specimens living in these ponds warrants recognition of these populations as a distinct taxon.

The new genus and species, Gondekia hastula, are described from the Middle Devonian (Givetian) Hungry Hollow Formation of southwestern Ontario. Astraeospongium lancifer Reimann, 1945, is also included in the new genus and A. acicularis is considered a synonym of that species. Gondekia has a flat saucer-like form and a felted, but thin, skeleton composed of at least three orders of regularly spaced and oriented simple sexiradiates. Gondekia is placed in the Eiffeliidae but is convergent toward the Astraeospongiidae in having a somewhat thickened wall.

Abundant “hydrozoans” are important frame-building and accessory organisms in Middle and Upper Permian reefs of southern China, particularly in western Hubei, eastern Sichuan, eastern Yunnan, and northwestern Guangxi. The new genera Radiotrabeculopora, Lichuanopora, and Pseudopalaeoaplysina are described, as are the new species Disjectopora beipeiensis, D. irregulara, Radiotrabeculopora xiangoboensis, R. maokoui, R. elegans, R. reticulata, R. astrorhiza, Balatonia robusta, Lichuanopora bancaoensis, L.(?) regulara, Pseudopalaeoaplysina sinensis, and P. major. The assemblage represents one of the most diverse upper Paleozoic “hydrozoan” assemblages known.

Adult intercolony fusion occurs in Paleofavosites capax (Billings) and P. asper (d'Orbigny) in the Silurian of Anticosti Island. This represents the first documented example of allogeneic fusion seen in tabulate corals. The occurrence of allogeneic fusion and non-fusion and the documentation of agonistic behavior in the same species attest to the presence of some degree of allorecognition specificity, now well established for modern corals, already in these Silurian corals. The implication is that the evolution of allorecognition systems, probably by polymorphism at allorecognition loci, was already well established 400 million years ago in corals. Banding, probably seasonal, appears to be more likely environmentally than genetically controlled.

Naticid gastropods of the Chesapeake Group of Maryland, like extant naticids, apparently were cannibalistic. This cannibalism did not result from the absence of bivalve prey or from the ineptitude of the predator, as some previous authors have suggested. Instead, predation on Chesapeake Group naticids was a predictable result of prey selection to maximize energy gain per foraging time.

This study examines predation on Lunatia heros (530 specimens) and Polinices duplicatus (340 specimens) from the St. Marys Formation of the Chesapeake Group. Predation on naticids displayed the same characteristics as predation on bivalve prey, including selectivity of prey size and drillhole site. The two naticid species were differentially attacked, based on their relative cost-benefit ratios and escape sizes. Cannibalism is not anomalous; it is the expected result of selective predation, and is inhibited primarily by the high mobility of naticid prey.

The lower River Bend Formation at the Martin Marietta New Bern quarry in Craven County, North Carolina, contains a diverse and abundant moldic molluscan fauna. This fauna, reconstructed by latex casts, suggests a Vicksburgian or a post-Vicksburgian, pre-Chickasawhayan age for the New Bern exposure. Forty-one molluscan species and subspecies are presently identified from the lower River Bend Formation, 11 of which are new: Turritella caelatura alani, Turritella neusensis, Galeodaria britti, Phalium newbernensis, Cymatium planinodum, Oocorys vadosus, Ecphora wheeleri, Lyria concinna, Scaphella saintjeani, Turricula (Orthosurcula) aequa, and Lucina (Stewartia) micraulax. This fauna is virtually identical at the generic level and similar at the species level to the Vicksburgian faunas of the Gulf Coastal Plain. About 37 percent of the New Bern species also occur in the Vicksburgian of Mississippi, although many of these species reach considerably larger sizes at New Bern. Apparent evolutionary transitions between previously known Vicksburgian and Chickasawhayan mollusks suggest a time of deposition intermediate between these two Oligocene stages.

Moderately high molluscan diversity, the abundance of characteristically warm-water genera, and associated carbonate-rich sediments suggest that the lower River Bend Formation represents a subtropical, open-marine, predominantly carbonate environment immediately seaward of a nearshore lagoonal or barrier island complex.

The lower River Bend Formation at New Bern differs faunally, climatically, and sedimentologically from the upper River Bend Formation in quarry exposures near Belgrade, North Carolina. The upper River Bend Formation contains a lower diversity molluscan fauna with marked dominance diversity and few warm-water taxa. It represents a slightly cooler nearshore, open-marine environment in a transitional siliciclastic-carbonate sedimentary regime. The considerable taxonomic and sedimentologic differences between the lower and upper parts of the River Bend Formation corroborate microfossil evidence suggesting that they represent temporally distinct depositional cycles.

The marine faunas from Patagonia, which are in need of a comprehensive revision, are particularly important in the understanding of the origin and evolution of the marine biota in the southern hemisphere during the final breakup of Gondwanaland during the Late Cretaceous–early Tertiary. The Eocene Río Turbio Formation in southern Patagonia (Argentina) contains a unique fauna of marine mollusks. This paper describes 35 species of bivalves from that unit. Nine of them are new: Nucula (Leionucula) guillermensis, Yoldia (Calorhadia) patagonica, Atrina rioturbiensis, Electroma patagonica, Venericardia (Venericor) carrerensis, Crassatella brandmayri, Solena (Eosolen) hunickeni, Pholadidea frenguellii, and Periploma (Aelga) primaverensis. In addition, 26 other species are also described, though their exact systematic relationships cannot at present be accurately established.

Size increase in European Miocene Anchitherium was described early in the century. Increase in size, particularly of the teeth, was common to the middle and late Miocene Eurasian Anchitherium and North American Hypohippus, including Megahippus, over the whole Holarctic range of these anchitherines. In this paper, size trends are described and interpreted against the background of simultaneous climatic change.

Several specimens of a pollen organ containing Monoletes pollen occur in a single coal ball collected from the Herrin No. 6 Coal at the Sahara Coal Company Mine in southern Illinois. Specimens are 3–4 cm long, up to 1 cm wide, and are either bilobed or trilobed; 5–7 pollen sacs are arranged along each side of a discontinuously sclerified ground tissue plate extending into each lobe. The vascular supply from the peduncle breaks up by repeated dichotomies and one bundle descends along the outer side of each pollen sac. The mode of dehiscence and the structure of the tip of the organ remain unknown. Each lobe (and contained sporangia) is hypothesized to be derived from an ancestral fertile frond segment bearing pendulous sporangia.

Pterosaurs are rare components of Texas Cretaceous faunas. The best known is Quetzalcoatlus northropi, from the Javelina Formation (Maastrichtian) of Big Bend National Park, with a wingspan of some 11-12 m (Lawson, 1975; Langston, 1986; Busbey and Lehmann, 1989). Texas pterosaur specimens of less spectacular proportions include a pteranodontid partial humerus (USNM 13804) from the Eagle Ford Formation (late Cenomanian-late Turonian) of Austin (Gilmore, 1935; Bennett, 1989) and a first wing phalanx of a pterodactyloid from the Buda Formation (Cenomanian) of Hays County (Langston, 1974; Lawson, 1975). Pterosaur bones were also recorded at localities near Forestburg, Montague County (Zangerl and Denison, 1950), in the Antlers Formation (Winkler et al., 1990), although these specimens are undiagnostic hollow bone fragments.

Paleontological investigations have played a critical role in the research of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since its founding in 1879. From about 1950 until recently, the bulk of these fossil materials collected by USGS field geologists was housed in the U.S. National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) in Washington, D.C, under the control of the Branch of Paleontology and Stratigraphy of the USGS. Large biostratigraphic sets of USGS collections also resided in Denver, Colorado, and Menlo Park, California, at the USGS regional centers.

Correspondence and working papers of a number of U.S. Geological Survey paleontologists who were once quartered in the U.S. National Museum of Natural History have been transferred to the Smithsonian Archives during the past few years. Major space reallocations in the Museum resulted in consolidation of USGS Paleontology and Stratigraphy Branch research activities into about one-quarter the space occupied before 1988. Consequently, most of the records and many of the fossil collections were moved out of the Museum.