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A Sandbian brachiopod association from the Calapuja Formation, in the Peruvian Altiplano, north-west of Lake Titicaca, has allowed a re-examination of the palaeobiogeographical relationships between Gondwana and Avalonia during the Late Ordovician, when the palaeocontinents are considered to be already very distant from one another. The brachiopod fauna includes the new species Onnizetina calapujensis sp. nov., Horderleyella chacaltanai sp. nov., Drabovinella minuscula sp. nov. and Tasmanella curtiseptata sp.

• Read more about Late Ordovician brachiopods from Peru and their palaeobiogeographical relationships

The Elikah River section spanning the Lopingian (Late Permian) to the Griesbachian (Early Triassic) time interval in the Central Alborz Mountains (north Iran) was sampled for ostracod analysis. We report 79 species distributed among 38 genera. Four new species are described: Acratia? pervagata Forel sp. nov., Microcheilinella alborzella Forel sp. nov., Basslerella superarella Crasquin sp. nov. and Cavellina nesenensis Crasquin sp. nov.

• Read more about Precocious sexual dimorphism and the Lilliput effect in Neo-Tethyan Ostracoda (Crustacea) through the Permian–Triassic boundary

Mosasaurs were large marine squamates that inhabited all of the world's oceans during the Late Cretaceous. Their success as apex predators has been attributed to their rapid acquisition of aquatic adaptations, which allowed them to become fully pelagic. However, little is known about the breeding biology of derived, flipper-bearing mosasaurs, as the record of neonatal mosasaur fossils is extremely sparse. Here, we report on the fragmentary cranial remains of two neonatal mosasaurs from the Niobrara Formation, referred to Clidastes sp.

• Read more about Pelagic neonatal fossils support viviparity and precocial life history of Cretaceous mosasaurs

The distinctly non-random diversity of organismal form manifests itself in discrete clusters of taxa that share a common body plan. As a result, analyses of disparity require a scalable comparative framework. The difficulties of applying geometric morphometrics to disparity analyses of groups with vastly divergent body plans are overcome partly by the use of cladistic characters. Character-based disparity analyses have become increasingly popular, but it is not clear how they are affected by character coding strategies or revisions of primary homology statements.

• Read more about Do cladistic and morphometric data capture common patterns of morphological disparity?

This article corrects:

Deciphering the early evolution of echinoderms with Cambrian fossils

Vol. 57, Issue 6, 1105–1119, Article first published online: 25 NOV 2014

• Read more about Erratum

strap (Stratigraphic Tree Analysis for Palaeontology) is a new package for the freely available statistical programming language R designed to perform three main tasks: (1) to time-scale phylogenies of fossil taxa; (2) to plot those time-scaled trees against stratigraphy; and (3) to assess congruence between phylogenies and stratigraphy. Time-scaling is performed with the DatePhylo function, with three approaches offered. Plotting trees against a choice of five different geological time scaless is possible using the geoscalePhylo function.

• Read more about strap: an R package for plotting phylogenies against stratigraphy and assessing their stratigraphic congruence

The Middle Miocene has been identified as a time of great diversification in modern lineages now distributed in tropical South America, and when basic archetypal traits defining Amazonia appear, including climatic humid conditions, basic floral physiognomy and phylogenetic composition of modern rainforests. Nonetheless, Middle Miocene localities in South America are poorly known, especially at low latitudes where only one species-rich locality, La Venta in Colombia, has been extensively studied.

• Read more about Life in proto-Amazonia: Middle Miocene mammals from the Fitzcarrald Arch (Peruvian Amazonia)

Bone microanatomy of multiple postcranial skeletal elements of several individuals of Hyperodapedon collected from India is reported. This reveals that fibrolamellar bone tissue is predominant in the mid- and inner cortices, whereas the peripheral region of the cortex is composed of either parallel-fibred and/or lamellar bone. The pattern of primary osteons mostly ranges between laminar and subplexiform. Such predominance of fibrolamellar bone tissue in the cortex suggests an overall fast growth, which slowed down considerably later in ontogeny.

• Read more about New insights from bone microanatomy of the Late Triassic Hyperodapedon (Archosauromorpha, Rhynchosauria): implications for archosauromorph growth strategy

Reconstructing the feeding ecology of fossil fishes can be difficult, but new mechanical approaches enable reasonably reliable inferences by comparison with living forms. Here, the feeding ecology of one of the most iconic and abundant actinopterygians of the Early Jurassic, Dapedium, is explored through detailed anatomical study and functional analyses of jaw mechanics. Mathematical models derived from modern teleost functional morphology are applied, to ascertain the transmission of force through the jaws of Dapedium.

• Read more about Feeding ecology of the deep-bodied fish Dapedium (Actinopterygii, Neopterygii) from the Sinemurian of Dorset, England

Ursolestes perpetior gen. et sp. nov. is a large purgatoriid plesiadapiform primate from the middle/late Puercan (earliest Paleocene) Simpson Quarry, Montana, USA.

• Read more about A ‘giant’ purgatoriid (Plesiadapiformes) from the Paleocene of Montana, USA: mosaic evolution in the earliest primates