The Palaearctic genus Niphargus is a promising model system to understand subterranean fauna genesis in Europe. Pannonian Plain (mainly covered by Hungary) Central Europe, once being the area of Paratethys, key for diversification. However, our knowledge on Hungarian species primarily based sporadic taxonomical works from pre-molecular era. Here, we studied 14 localities, covering eight valid a...

BACKGROUND The classification of gobioid fishes is still under discussion. Several lineages, including the Eleotridae and Butidae, remain difficult to characterize because synapomorphies are rare (Eleotridae) or have not yet been determined (Butidae). Moreover, the fossil record of these groups is scarce. RESULTS Exceptionally well-preserved fish fossils with otoliths in situ from uppermost O...

Nucleotide sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome b and 16S rRNA genes, totaling 946 bp, were used to reconstruct a molecular phylogeny of 42 species of the subfamily Viperinae representing 12 of the 13 recognized genera. Maximum-parsimony and maximum-likelihood were used as methods for phylogeny reconstruction with and without a posteriori weighting. When representatives of the Causinae were ta...

Over three thousand specimens representing the superfamily Trochoidea Rafinesque, 1815 [Trochidae and Calliostomatidae Thiele, 1924 (1847)] from upper Upper Badenian = Kosovian lower Serravallian (middle Miocene) marine deposits of Ukraine, housed in collections Polish Academy Sciences Museum Earth Warsaw (MZ), are studied herein. The abundant material has allowed for investigations intraspecif...

Inland epigean freshwater amphipods of Romania are diverse and abundant for this region has a favourable geographical position between the Balkans and the Black Sea. Excluding Ponto-Caspian species originating in brackish waters and freshwater subterranean taxa, there are 11 formally recognized epigean freshwater species recorded from this country. They belong to 3 genera, each representing a d...