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Bromalites from the Soom Shale are allocated to five main categories on the basis of shape, content and internal structure: those containing broken conodont elements; those containing brachiopod fragments; corrugated/spiral forms; coiled coprolites and wrinkled coprolites. It is impossible to allocate specific bromalites to the organisms that formed them, but the occurrence of crushed discinoid valves in several specimens demonstrates that an effective durophagous predator was present in the Soom Shale community.

• Read more about Bromalites from the Soom Shale Lagerstätte (Upper Ordovician) of South Africa: palaeoecological and palaeobiological implications

The Lower Cretaceous rocks of South Australia have yielded a diverse marine reptile assemblage of up to five families of plesiosaur (including a new cryptoclidid or cimoliasaurid, indeterminate elasmosaurids, a possible polycotylid, rhomaleosaurids, and pliosaurid) and one family of ichthyosaur (ophthalmosaurid). Other common associated vertebrates include chimaerids and osteichthyans. Sharks, dipnoans and dinosaurs are uncommon and marine turtles are notably absent.

• Read more about Marine reptiles from the Lower Cretaceous of South Australia: elements of a high-latitude cold-water assemblage

Abundant arthropod walking and jumping traces, from the Lower Permian Robledo Mountains Formation of southern New Mexico, provide direct evidence of the locomotory techniques of monurans, an extinct group of archaeognathan apterygote insects. The jumping behaviour of monurans is compared with that of the extant machilid archaeognathan Petrobius. The jumping traces are referred to Tonganoxichnus robledoensis, and demonstrate that monurans were capable of forward progression via a linear succession of jumps of several times their body length.

• Read more about Walking and jumping with Palaeozoic apterygote insects

The first mygalomorph spiders from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Lagerstatte of Ceara Province, north-east Brazil, are described, from adult males and females, in two new genera and species: Cretadiplura ceara Selden, gen. et sp. nov. and Dinodiplura ambulacra Selden, gen. et sp. nov. They belong to the extant family Dipluridae, hitherto known as fossils only from Tertiary strata; thus this occurrence extends the family record by some 90 myr.

• Read more about Mygalomorph spiders (Araneae: Dipluridae) from the Lower Cretaceous Crato Lagerstätte, Araripe Basin, north-east Brazil

Archaeoradiolites gen. nov. (Radiolitidae), mainly characterized by radially arranged branching walls structuring the outer shell layer, includes two species, Archaeoradiolites primitivus gen. et sp. nov. and Archaeoradiolites hispanicus gen. et sp. nov. (type species), the distinction of which is based on size, shell habit and development of the radially branching microstructure. Their geographical distribution is restricted to south-east Spain and south-west France, i.e.

• Read more about Archaeoradiolites, a new genus from the Upper Aptian of the Mediterranean region and the origin of the rudist family Radiolitidae

A large number of fenestrate bryozoan species were named in 'A Synopsis of the Characters of the Carboniferous Limestone Fossils of Ireland' by Frederick M'Coy (1844). At the same time, M'Coy named the bryozoan genera Ichthyorachis, Ptylopora and Polypora, each of which by monotypy or by subsequent designation was based on new species within that work.

• Read more about Fenestrate bryozoan genera based on species from Ireland originally described by Frederick M'Coy in 1844

A palaeoecological study of sclerozoan foraminifera of the families Saccamminidae (aff. Sagenina), Lituolidae (Placopsilina), Cibicididae (Cibicides, Dyocibicides, Cibicidella) and Planorbulinidae (Planorbulina and Planorbulinella) that colonized epifaunal bivalves (ostreids and pectinids) during the early Pliocene in southern Spain has led to the recognition of two new boring ichnogenera: Camarichnus ichnogen. nov., with two ichnospecies, C. subrectangularis ichnosp. nov. and C. arcuatus ichnosp. nov., and Canalichnus ichnogen. nov., with one ichnospecies, C. tenuis ichnosp. nov.

• Read more about Bioerosive structures of sclerozoan foraminifera from the lower Pliocene of southern Spain: a contribution to the palaeoecology of marine hard substrate communities

A detailed description of the postcranial skeleton of the Hyposaurinae is presented, based on the hitherto known and new postcranial material.

• Read more about The postcranial skeleton of the Hyposaurinae (Dyrosauridae; Crocodyliformes)

Two ironstone nodules are described from the Braidwood Biota of the Upper Carboniferous Mazon Creek Lagerstatte, Illinois, each preserving numerous juvenile millipedes referred to Euphoberia sp. The millipedes belong to different stadia, as evidenced by segment number, but are similar in size so probably nearly the same age. These juvenile euphoberiids differ from adults in having shorter pleurotergal spines, a reduced number of ocelli and a series of reduced, apodous trunk rings posteriorly. These nodules provide the first evidence of aggregation behaviour in Palaeozoic millipedes.

• Read more about Aggregation behaviour in juvenile millipedes from the Upper Carboniferous of Mazon Creek, Illinois

• Read more about Hamamlia, a replacement name for the fimbriid bivalve genus Cerkesia Monari non Moiseev