New specimens of Gabelia pedunculus Rigby and Murphy, 1983, and of the new species Gabelia giganta and Gabelia fascicula are described from the Siluro-Devonian(?) Roberts Mountains Formation from Loomis Creek Canyon in the Snake Mountains, northeastern Elko County, Nevada. Stalk fragments of G. pedunculus are similar to the holotype from the northern Roberts Mountains, Eureka County, Nevada. Gabelia giganta n. sp. is a large species with skeletal elements in the stalk twice the size of elements in G. pedunculus. Gabelia fascicula n. sp. is based on thick-walled, cup-like upper parts where a gastral layer of coarse, diagonally oriented spicules contrasts to a dermal layer of regular vertical and horizontal bundles of hexactine-based spicules of at least two orders around parietal gaps. The specimens are all part of a probably transported seafloor assemblage.

Carbonates and rare shales of the ca 700–800 Ma old Draken Conglomerate Formation, northeastern Spitsbergen, preserve a record of environmental variation within a Neoproterozoic tidal flat/lagoon complex. Forty-two microfossil taxa have been recognized in Draken rocks, and of these, 39 can be characterized in terms of their paleoenvironmental distributions along a gradient from the supratidal zone to permanently submerged lagoons. Supratidal to subtidal trends include: increasing microbenthic diversity, increasing abundance and diversity of included allochthonous (presumably planktonic) elements, decreasing sheath thickness of mat-building organisms (with significant taphonomic consequences), and an increasing sediment/fossil ratio in fossiliferous rocks. Five principal and several minor biofacies can be distinguished. The paleoecological resolution obtainable in the Draken Conglomerate Formation rivals that achieved for most Phanerozoic fossil deposits. It documents the complexity and diversity of Proterozoic coastal ecosystems and indicates that both environment and taphonomy need to be taken into explicit consideration in attempts to understand evolutionary trends in the early fossil record. Three species, Coniunctiophycus majorinum, Myxococcoides distola, and M. chlorelloidea, are described as new; Siphonophycus robustum, Siphonophycus septatum, and Gorgonisphaeridium maximum are proposed as new combinations.

Stromatoporoids are found in all five members of the Manlius Formation of New York and are abundant at many localities. The fauna is dominated by two closely related species, Habrostroma microporum (Girty) and H. centrotum (Girty). Present in lesser numbers are Intexodictyon manliusense n. sp., Plectostroma micum (Bogoyavlenskaya), Actinostromella vaiverensis Nestor, Densastroma pexisum (Yavorsky), Habrostroma cf. H. centrotum (Girty), and ?Parallelostroma sp. The assemblage displays both Silurian and Devonian affinities.

Some of the relatively recent literature correlating morphological variation in benthic foraminifera with environmental parameters such as temperature, salinity, carbonate solubility, depth, nutrition, substrate, dissolved oxygen, illumination, pollution, water motion, trace elements, and rapid environmental fluctuation is reviewed. It appears some variables (most notably depth) are recorded more frequently, which may affect some conclusions. Although each variable is treated separately, it appears that almost no variables act independently on test morphologies. In reviewing the literature, it becomes clear that there are many individual trends, especially with shell ornamentation, but few broad ones, and that it is almost impossible, with exception of some of the larger reef-dwelling, symbiont-bearing foraminifera, to predict how any species will react to various parameters. The broad trends concern thinning or thickening of carbonate tests with changing carbonate availability, temperature, and salinity. It appears that many observations of morphological changes within species may not be recorded in the literature, perhaps because authors did not recognize the importance of small details that would be of importance at a later time.

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.

The uppermost Lower Silurian and Upper Silurian Gascons and West Point Formations of the southern Gaspé Peninsula were deposited under a broad range of environmental conditions from deep offshore-shelf to reef facies. Halysitid and auloporid tabulate corals occur in a number of facies and show a high degree of endemism.

Two species of Halysitidae and three species of Auloporida are found in these formations. Both halysitids have been previously described from this region. The auloporids include the new species Syringopora minuta and another species that may represent the first known Silurian occurrence of the fletcheriellid genus Pseudofletcheria. A neotype for the halysitid Cystihalysites amplitubulatus (Lambe) is proposed.

Stomatopods (mantis shrimps) are important predators in Recent tropical shallow-water communities. Despite a long geological history, they are poorly preserved as fossils, and traces of their predation have never been identified from the fossil record. Here we report on Plio-Pleistocene gastropods (mostly Strombus) from Florida with distinctive holes “punched” into their body whorls. The similarity of these holes to holes punched into live gastropods by Gonadactylus implicates gonodactyloid stomatopods as the predators that made them. Recent gonodactyloids break gastropod shells as thick and thicker than those of the Plio-Pleistocene strombids that were punched. Because our data underestimate the incidence of stomatopod predation, the frequency of holes in these strombids (8–13 percent) suggests that stomatopod predation may be of considerable importance in the ecological and evolutionary history of tropical benthic assemblages.

Latest Precambrian through Early Cambrian tectonic history and stratigraphy are comparable in southeastern Cape Breton Island and the western Placentia–Bonavista axis, southeastern Newfoundland. The lithostratigraphic nomenclature of southeastern Newfoundland is used for this interval in Cape Breton Island. Upper Precambrian volcanic rocks of the Forchu Group (=“Giant Lake Complex,’ designation abandoned) are unconformably overlain by uppermost Precambrian through lowest Cambrian strata termed the “Morrison River Formation’ (designation abandoned). This depositional sequence consists of three formations: 1) red beds through tidalites of the Rencontre Formation (to 279+ m; =“Kelvin Lake Formation,’ designation abandoned); 2) prodeltaic clastics of the Chapel Island Formation (to 260 m); and 3) macrotidal quartzites of the Random Formation (to 71 + m). Post-Random block faulting and 300 m of local erosion took place prior to onlap of the “MacCodrum Formation’ (abandoned). Siliciclastic mudstones of the lower “MacCodrum’ are re-assigned to the middle Lower Cambrian Bonavista Group. Sub-trilobitic faunas from the Bonavista Group include “Ladatheca’ cylindrica from the West Centre Cove Formation(?) and higher diversity faunas (23 species) in the Camenella baltica Zone of the Cuslett and Fosters Point Formations. Trilobite-bearing, upper Lower Cambrian (Branchian Series) strata (Brigus Formation, =upper “MacCodrum’ and overlying “Canoe Brook’ Formations) unconformably overlie the Placentian Series in Cape Breton Island, southeastern Newfoundland, Shropshire, and, probably, eastern Massachusetts. Correlations based on small shelly fossils indicate an earlier appearance of trilobites in Avalon than on the South China Platform. Twenty-six species are illustrated. Halkieria fordi n. sp., the conodont(?) “Rushtonites’ asiatica n. sp., and the zhijinitid(?) Samsanoffoclavus matthewi n. gen. and sp. are described. Ischyrinia? sp. may be the oldest ischyrinoid rostroconch.

Stratigraphic distribution of two key brachiopod species in the Ramp Creek Formation and Harrodsburg Limestone (middle Mississippian) in south-central Indiana suggests the boundary between the Osagean and Meramecian Series lies in the lower part of the Ramp Creek Formation. Marginirugus magnus (Meek and Worthen), an Osagean index fossil, ranges into the lower part of the Ramp Creek Formation. Warsawia lateralis (Hall), a Meramecian index fossil, also occurs in the lower part of the Ramp Creek Formation and in the lower part of the Harrodsburg Limestone. Thus, the upper part of the Edwardsville Formation and lower part of the Ramp Creek Formation in Indiana are temporally equivalent to the lower half of the Warsaw Formation in the Mississippi Valley. The upper part of the Ramp Creek Formation and the lower part of the Harrodsburg Limestone are temporally equivalent to the upper half of the Warsaw Formation.

Rugose and tabulate corals from the Lower Permian (Wolfcampian, Leonardian) Bird Spring Group in the Lee Canyon section of the Spring Mountains, Clark County, Nevada, are referred to eight genera and ten species. New taxa are Fomichevella nevadensis n. sp., F. waltersi n. sp., Mccloudius parvus n. sp., and Paraheritschioides richi n. sp. The fauna is most similar to the shelf fauna in eastern Nevada, but there are significant similarities to corals from the Antler Highland embayments of central Nevada and southern Idaho and to faunas of the same age in northern California and northern British Columbia. The paleogeography is interpreted as shallow water near the east side of the mouth of a south-opening coastal sea, bordered on the east by the continent and on the west by the Antler Highland. Corals migrated south along the western shores of the Antler Highland and mixed with the shelf fauna, perhaps with some corals crossing from Tethys to the coast. The modern eastern Pacific tropical coral faunas, which have several hermatypic coral genera and species derived from the western Pacific in the Pleistocene, may occupy a somewhat similar geography near the mouth of the modern Gulf of California.

A new lamellorthoceratid genus, Plicatoceras, is defined on the basis of Plicatoceras nishidai n. sp. from the early Gedinnian shale of the Fukuji Formation in central Japan. The new genus is the earliest known member of the Lamellorthoceratidae and is the first record of a lamellorthoceratid cephalopod from East Asia.

Coccoid and filamentous microfossils in the Borden Rift Basin on northwestern Baffin Island and western Bylot Island are reported from 14 localities at six general stratigraphic levels in the Society Cliffs Formation, and one in the Victor Bay Formation. At least seven of 12 fossiliferous Society Cliffs samples, and one of two Victor Bay samples, are from cherty dolostones formed in shallow restricted, peritidal evaporitic environments. The remaining six fossiliferous samples accumulated in somewhat deeper, less restricted waters. The assemblage is preserved in black chert nodules and layers and comprises 30 taxa, including the filamentous forms Archaeotrichion? sp., Tenuofilum septatum, Eomycetopsis robusta, Siphonophycus inornatum, S. kestron, Rhicnonema antiquum, Brachypleganon sp., Eomicrocoleus sp., Uluksanella baffinensis n. gen. and sp., Talakania? sp., the coccoid taxa Eosynechococcus medius, E. grandis, Archaeoellipsoides obesus, Sphaerophycus parvum, S. medium, Myxococcoides minor, M. grandis, Melasmatosphaera spp., Phanerosphaerops capitaneus, Palaeoanacystis sp., Tetraphycus hebeiensis, Eogloeocapsa bella, Gloeodiniopsis magna, G. sp. 1, G. mikros, Polybessurus bipartitus, Cymatiosphaera? sp., the fusiform Eupoikilofusa? sp., and rare specimens of two unidentified and problematic taxa.

The species Pleurostomella concava is a new benthic foraminifer recognized in Oligocene and Miocene sediments from the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The first mentioned finding of this species is in the material recovered from the experimental Mohole drilling near Guadalupe Island off Baja California. The morphology of Pleurostomella concava differs distinctively from other species of the genus Pleurostomella by its concave apertural face and keel-like rim around the ultimate chamber.

Specimens of the discoid, chambered megafossil Kullingia delicata (Fedonkin) occur near the base of member 2 of the Chapel Island Formation on the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland. Morphologic and taphonomic features suggest that these fossils can be interpreted as the impressions of pelagic chondrophorines. Kullingia provides a link between Ediacaran and Paleozoic forms, and thus supports the view that the Chondrophorina represents a conservative evolutionary lineage extending back into the Precambrian.

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.

Conical and vase-shaped calathids are found in the Lower Ordovician Fillmore Formation of western Utah associated with intraformational conglomerates and small patch reefs. Calathium yersini n. sp. exhibits patterns of both the inner and outer walls of calathid two-wall construction. The broadly annulate walls are constructed from meroms with fused proximal merom feet forming the inner wall. The reticulate-patterned outer wall is formed by interlocking stellate ribs at the distal end of each merom. Latitudinal (horizontal) ribs interlock adjacent merom ribs side by side at the tips of ribs while meridional (vertical) ribs overlap merom shaft to merom shaft. Inner and outer walls are perforate. Pore-canal casts preserved in silicified molds suggest an exit and entrance current circulation for inner and outer wall pores. Upper ends of the calathids are not preserved, but an open cup is interpreted from infill material and encrustation of the interior cup wall by epibionts. Epibionts commonly encrust and thicken Calathium outer walls, with the cyanobacterium Girvanella as the dominant encrusting organism. Calathium yersini n. sp., among the earliest of receptaculitids, has a morphology suitable for water circulation consistent with that of filter-feeding organisms.

The upper surface of the corallum of Catenipora rubra was often at or just above the sediment-water interface during life. The vertical growth rate was barely sufficient to keep pace with background sedimentation and possible subsidence of the corallum. Therefore, the colonies were in constant danger of being covered by influxes of sediment, especially during storms. This was compensated by the ability of polyps to respond to sedimentation events and by certain aspects of colony growth. Rapid regeneration following partial mortality involved budding of uninjured polyps and rejuvenation of damaged individuals, in some cases accompanied by a type of axial increase not previously known in tabulate corals. Rapid lateral expansion was possible because small, “immature” polyps could bud and grow in a reptant manner.

Interconnected ranks of the cateniform corallum served to dam shifting sediment at the periphery of the colony. Lacunae within the colony were reservoirs for material that breached peripheral ranks and for sediment that settled on the ranks and was rejected by polyps or removed by passive flow. Polyps comprising the colony were distributed over a large area of the substrate surface, thereby decreasing the probability of complete mortality during sedimentation events and increasing the probability that a sufficient number of individuals would survive to ensure optimum regeneration. The corallum, anchored in the substrate and with sediment filling the lacunae, provided a broad, stable base during high-energy events.

It remains to be established how widespread these growth patterns and strategies were among other corals with cateniform colonies, a form that appeared in many unrelated stocks. Most previous workers emphasized physical strength when considering functional morphology, following a tacit assumption that the corallum rose high above the substrate and was therefore susceptible to breakage during high-energy events. An understanding of the origin of cateniform patterns and the phylogeny of these corals requires knowledge of their modes of growth and life-history strategies, which were genetically as well as environmentally controlled.