RESUMO
Devonian brachiopods, identifiable at the generic level, have been recovered from calc-silicate rocks more intensely metamorphosed and metasomatized than any other known fossil occurrence. The fossils are a key stratigraphic link between granulite facies rocks of central New Hampshire and fossiliferous rocks of western New Hampshire and Maine.
RESUMO
Several taxa of abundant cutinized trilete spores from earliest Silurian shale in New York predate by almost an entire period vascular land plant megafossils. Paleoecological evidence suggests that these spores may represent vascular land or semiaquatic plants but a bryophytic origin cannot be precluded on the basis of spore characters. An algal origin is considered unlikely.
RESUMO
Paleozoic paleogeographies should be consistent with all available, reliable data. However, comparison of three different Devonian paleogeographies that are based largely or wholly on the data of remanent magnetism show them to be inconsistent in many regards. When these three paleogeographies are provided with possible ocean surface current circulation patterns, and have added to them lithofacies and biogeographic data, they also are shown to be inconsistent with such data. A pangaeic reconstruction positioned in the Southern Hemisphere permits the lithofacies and biogeographical data to be reconciled in a plausible manner.
RESUMO
Land-plant type spores occur in argillaceous limestones and platform graptolitic mudstones of Wenlock-Ludlow age in Sweden. Analysis of the stratal sequence demonstrates that occurrence of abundant spores is a function of depositional ecology, particularly water depth and shoreline proximity. This ecological analysis and the seeming absence of any correlation between the first appearances of abundant spores and megafossils of land-plant type raise the possibility that land plants evolved far earlier than the megafossil record suggests.
RESUMO
Silurian outcrops, not previously recorded from central Texas, have been identified from the Llano uplift, where they occur in collapse structures within the Lower Ordovician Honeycut Formation of the Ellenburger Group. The formation is a pinkish-gray granular limestone, contains fossils of probable Wenlock age, and is named the Starcke Limestone.
RESUMO
Protozoan cysts and helminth eggs preserved in a coprolite from the Early Cretaceous Bernissart Iguanodon shaft in Belgium demonstrate that representatives of 3 phyla parasitized dinosaurs by that period. These fossil parasite stages are described and their possible effect on dinosaurs discussed. These findings represent the earliest fossil records of protozoan and helminth parasites of terrestrial vertebrates.