An interval of the Early to Middle Pleistocene history of the California Borderland was assessed using multivariate analysis of foraminifera from the Santa Barbara Formation at Bathhouse Beach, Santa Barbara, California. A census of 93 species of benthic foraminifera and nine species of planktonic foraminifera was compiled from 11 samples from the shelly marls, silts, and sands of the lower member. Most species of benthic foraminifera are rare and only 38 species comprise one percent or more of the population in one or more samples.

Paleoenvironment of the sea floor was determined based on benthic foraminifera. R-mode cluster analysis defined five associations which are similar to those of the present-day banks and terraces of the California Borderland. Q-mode cluster analysis grouped samples into four biofacies which characterize shallow banks near 50 meters water depth and off-shore ridges and deep banks averaging 150 meters water depth. The stratigraphic succession of biofacies indicates two transgressive cycles separated by an apparent disconformity between 7.5 and 8.9 meters above the base of the section (between samples 3 and 4).

Paleoceanography of surficial waters was interpreted from planktonic foraminifera. Paleotemperature was assessed from the proportion of sinistral to dextral morphs and from the proportion of encrusted, compact morphs to reticulate, globular morphs of Neogloboquadrina pachyderma. The coiling morphs show a warm interval from the base of the section to about 12 meters (between samples 5 and 6), and a cooler interval from about 12 meters to about 24 meters (between samples 10 and 11), and an interval of intermediate paleotemperature in the topmost sample of the section. Changes in the planktonic assemblage do not coincide with the transgressive cycles inferred from the benthic biofacies.

The Bathhouse Beach section can be placed chronostratigraphically based on planktonic foraminiferal coiling shifts and strontium isotopic data. The isotopic age range of 400 to 900 Kyr brackets the 600 Kyr age assigned by Lagoe and Thompson (1988) to the Neogloboquadrina pachyderma coiling dominance interval CD9/CD8 boundary which occurs midway in the section, between samples 5 and 6.

Blastulospongia is an enigmatic siliceous fossil with affinities proposed amongst both the sphinctozoan-grade sponges and radiolarians. Blastulospongia polytreta n. sp. extends the record of this genus into the Lower Cambrian (Shuijingtuo Formation) and represents its first occurrence in China (Taishanmiao section, Hubei Province). It differs from previously described species in size and pore spacing. The first evidence for benthic attachment is presented. A relationship with sphinctozoan-grade sponges is considered unlikely, but firm support for a place in the radiolarians is lacking.

Three remarkable fossil medusoid hydrozoans (Plectodiscus latinautilus n. sp.) with disc, topsail, and pendant tentacular appendages were recovered from the latest Late Devonian beds of the Sappington Member of the Three Forks Formation in the Gallatin Range, southwest Montana. This is the first velellid reported from a Paleozoic beach paleoenvironment. Top and underside patterns of these chondrophorine velellids display well-preserved casts and mold imprints in fine siltstone. Outlines of the circular disc and the profile of the wide sail and tentacular structures embedded in soft tissue can be recognized.

These floating colonial animals were moved along the southeast shores of the Sappington Basin during a time of eustatic sea level lowering and regression in a tropical setting. Colonies were washed up on the upper beach where they were stranded in the bubbling swash left behind by the surf. The foreshore was constructed of tabular, planar cross-bedded, seaward-dipping, foreset accretionary beds which contain parallel laminations and lime-coated grains. Bedding is inclined 17° to 24° seaward.

A disk-shaped massive colony of Tetradium, from the Middle Ordovician Bobcaygeon Formation in southern Ontario, displays features of a coral microatoll. This is the first pre-Holocene coral microatoll yet described, indicating that some tabulate corals in level-bottom communities were growing as microatolls as do many modern colonial skeleton-secreting organisms.

The microatoll therefore is not strictly a Quaternary or even Cenozoic phenomenon, but has a fossil record that may span most of the Phanerozoic. This indicates that the special conditions necessary for microatoll growth have existed outside of reef environments, and were present before the advent of scleractinian coral reefs. It may be possible to use ancient microatolls to estimate absolute water depths at low tide, thereby providing a means for estimating maximum water depths on a local and regional scale.

The Early to Late Silurian sedimentary rocks of the Limestone Point and La Vieille Formations of northern New Brunswick and the Anse à Pierre-Loiselle, La Vieille, and Gascons Formations of the Gaspé Peninsula possess diverse and abundant tabulate coral faunas that include six species of Heliolitidae distributed among Heliolites and Stelliporella. Two species, Heliolites laxus and Heliolites distinctus, are new. A revised concept of the genus Heliolites is proposed. The Heliolitidae from this region show a substantial degree of endemism and are most similar to northern European faunas.

The distribution of individual heliolitid species was under a high degree of facies control. The heliolitids are more restricted in distribution than are other groups of Tabulata in this region and are most abundant in open shelf and carbonate bank facies.

Permian corals of Bolivia are confined to the Lower Permian (Wolfcampian, Leonardian) Copacabana Limestone. The coral fauna of the formation in the Lake Titicaca to the central altiplano areas of the Department of La Paz consists of two solitary rugose coral species, two colonial rugose coral species (one each of fasciculate and cerioid), and two tabulate coral species. New taxa are Stylastraea branisai n. sp., Durhamina pandolfi n. sp., Michelinia escobari n. sp., and Cladochonus carrascoi n. sp. Lophophyllidium striatum (d'Orbigny, 1839), based on Bolivian specimens, is redescribed, a lectotype designated, and the range extended to North America. Although the fauna is small, its taxonomic composition shows clear affinity with faunas of similar age northward through South and Central America to Mexico and the USA Texas-Oklahoma-Midcontinent region. The Bolivian fauna thus is confirmed as belonging to the Cyathaxonid Coral Province, which is restricted to the above areas. A species of Durhamina previously erected for Guatemalan specimens occurs in the Copacabana Limestone of Peru and strengthens the province assignment of the formation.

The internal morphology of ambocoeliid brachiopods from the Middle Devonian Hamilton Group of western New York indicates a need for several taxonomic revisions. “Ambocoelia” praeumbona is transferred to Emanuella. “Ambocoelia” spinosa and “A.” nana represent Crurispina n. gen. Specimens of species belonging to Crurispina have moderately well developed crural plates, and, accordingly, they are assigned to the subfamily Rhynchospiriferinae. Crural plates are small and obscure but clearly present in Ambocoelia umbonata, the type species of Ambocoelia. Thus, the diagnosis of the subfamily Ambocoeliinae is emended to include species with tiny crural plates.

Ambocoeliid specimens from the Levanna Shale Member of the Skaneateles Formation, formerly referred to Echinocoelia, reveal several elaborate features in the pedicle valve, including an apical plate and a hollow tube supported by a median septum. These specimens represent a new genus and species, Mucroclipeus eliei. The homeomorphy found in the shape and size of these ambocoeliids may be the result of paedomorphosis. Additionally, their pattern of occurrence and minute size suggest that they attained their paedomorphic state through progenesis. The taxa Ambocoelia tuberculata n. sp., Crurispina n. gen., and Mucroclipeus eliei n. gen. and sp. are established.

Three gastropod species are described from a previously unknown shallow-marine molluscan fauna in the lower Eocene Bateque Formation, southwest of San Ignacio, Baja California Sur, Mexico. Velates batequensis n. sp., a commonly occurring neritid in the Bateque, is the only ribbed Velates known from the Western Hemisphere. The fairly rare Platyoptera pacifica n. sp. is the earliest record of this strombid genus and its first occurrence on the west coast of North America. The very rare Cypraedia sp. is also the first occurrence of this cypraeid-like genus on the west coast of North America.

Anomiid bivalves are abundant locally in a few beds of the Jetmore and Pfeifer Members (Turonian) of the Greenhorn Limestone of central Kansas. Our collection comprises nearly 500 whole and fragmentary specimens that are assigned to two new species, Anomia cobbani and A. pfeiferensis, based on external morphology and biometry. Occurrence of delicate Anomia valves in just a few beds of the Jetmore and Pfeifer reflects selective preservation that resulted from unusual taphonomic and diagenetic conditions rather than restricted stratigraphic and geographic range. Variations in curvature of the commissure and close association of Greenhorn Anomia with molds of small baculitid cephalopods suggest that these bivalves were epizoic on the baculitids. On the basis of close morphologic similarity, stratigraphic proximity, and geographic occurrence of the two new species, A. pfeiferensis n. sp. is believed to be the direct evolutionary descendant of A. cobbani n. sp.

Neoinoceramus Ihering, 1902, hitherto placed in the family Pernidae, is shown to be a member of the family Limidae, according to its edentulous hinge, well-defined ligamentary pit, and biauriculated shell. It was an epibenthonic bivalve living attached by a byssus to the hard substrate in a platform environment where some epibionts (muricaceous gastropods, sponges) were fixed on its shell.

An abundant, low diversity, poorly preserved Late Permian ostracode faunule was recovered from residues of dissolved limestone. Collections are from the Corumbataí Formation exposed near Conchas, about 194 km northwest of São Paulo and from a borehole into the upper part of the Corumbataí Formation. Although the Corumbataí Formation has been interpreted mainly as a restricted marine-transitional offshore/shoreface and tidal-flat deposit, the ostracodes represent nonmarine taxa. Steinkerns of Candona, Cypridopsis?, Darwinula?, Gutschickia?, and genus unknown are illustrated in open nomenclature; they indicate freshwater influences. Several Permian marine genera from lower Gondwana (=Carboniferous-Permian), illustrated in open nomenclature, show that their steinkerns would differ from those illustrated here from Brazil. Although the Late Permian drainage from the north into the Paraná Basin has been considered to have been meager, rivers from the north must have supplied sufficient water to freshen the margins of the basin so that immigration of nonmarine ostracodes occurred.

Based on the similarity of the distinctive lateral outline of the Brazilian specimens to the nonmarine living genus Candona, the stratigraphic range of the genus is tentatively extended into the Permian.

The barnacle fauna of the Miocene Bear Lake Formation of the Alaska Peninsula includes Chirona (Chirona) alaskana n. sp., and three species of Balanus Da Costa conspecific with or related to the extant species Balanus balanus (Linnaeus), B. nubilus Darwin, and B. crenatus (Bruguière). Although the Bear Lake fauna lived in warm temperate waters, its modern counterparts are found primarily in boreo-arctic and cool temperate regions of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. Miocene barnacle faunas in Japan are similar to those of the Alaska Peninsula, lacking relatives of B. nubilus, but including Semibalanus Pilsbry, which does not appear until the Pleistocene in the eastern Pacific. Elements of this boreo-Arctic fauna do not appear in the North Atlantic basin until the Pleistocene, suggesting migration of the fauna into the Atlantic with the opening of the Bering Straits.

Two new species of Eomyelodactylus, E. sparteus and E. uniformis, are described from the Lower Silurian of New York. Macnamaratylus murrayi Bolton from the Lower Silurian of Ontario, Canada, is redescribed and assigned to Eomyelodactylus. Together, these species permit detailed description of this poorly known myelodactylid genus.

Harmostocrinus jonesi n. sp. (Mississippian: Chesterian) is described from the upper part of the Monteagle Limestone in northern Alabama, and is distinguished from all other species of the genus by bifurcation of the A-ray arm on IBr2 instead of IBr1. Reduction in overall number of arms, A-ray arm bifurcation, and reduction of cup-size demonstrate that H. jonesi is a paedomorphic evolutionary intermediate between the stratigraphically older Mississippian genus Abrotocrinus, and other, younger species of Harmostocrinus. Both peramorphosis (cup characters) and paedomorphosis (arm characters) were important factors in the evolution of Harmostocrinus jonesi.

The crown of an erect plant (probable juvenile tree/shrub) has been recovered from Lower Pennsylvanian strata of the southern Appalachian basin. It is preserved in three dimensions and provides the first confirmatory evidence for the compact helical arrangement of leaves in early Late Carboniferous plants. The crown is partially cast and partially compressed and is comprised of 11 leaves disposed in a 3/5 phyllotaxis. Substantiation of tight helical leaf development restricted to the crown of an Early Pennsylvanian plant provides evidence for greater architectural diversification in growth habit than presently documented at this time in tree ferns or pteridosperms.

There appears to be an overwhelming urge in the study of earth sciences currently to discover the “cosmic generality.” Certainly, no observational and descriptive aspects of the study of earth history can be concluded until one has placed the observations into a broader context. On the other hand, there are not very many “cosmic generalities” and few lasting generalizations have been developed before the basic data have been gathered. When generalizations do precede observations, the former fall into the category of testable hypotheses or speculations, depending upon the overall plausibility of the ideas and the generosity of the reader.

Ichnofacies stand today as one of the more elegant but widely misunderstood concepts in ichnology, especially where paleobathymetry is concerned. Marine ichnofacies are not intended to be paleobathometers, as some workers continue to imply (e.g., Lockley et al., 1987; Ekdale, 1988); rather, they are archetypical facies models based upon recurring ichnocoenoses (Frey and Pemberton, 1984, 1985, 1987). If a particular ichnocoenose tends to occur repeatedly within a given bathymetric setting, so much the better; but water depth per se is rarely, if ever, a governing factor. Ichnocoenoses and ichnofacies, therefore, are best viewed in the context of actual depositional conditions or environmental gradients, wherever they occur (Figure 1).

Two fossil wing specimens from adult cockroaches (order Blattaria) were discovered during field investigations at the Cretaceous outcrop of the Cobb's Creek site (NE1/4, sec. 4, T109N, R30W; Brown County) near New Ulm, Minnesota. Prior to the present investigation, no adult fossil insect parts from Minnesota have been described from deposits as old as the Cretaceous. Lewis (1970) described immature caddisfly cases (Trichoptera) from the Cobb's Creek site.