Four new species of Chironomidae with well-developed elongate proboscises are described from a Late Jurassic site Shar Teg in SW Mongolia. These are named Cretaenne rasnicynisp. n., Podonomius blepharissp. n., Podonomius macromastixsp. n., ?Podonomius robustussp. n.

Jurassic fossils of a bizarre fly larva that lived in water as a blood-sucking parasite highlight how much can be learnt from the study of the fossils of immature insects.

West Carpathian Mesozoic paleogeographic development indicates the effect of a left lateral shift of the Alpine- Carpathian microcontinent along the European shelf since the Early Jurassic. The evolution during Late Triassic/Early Jurassic was controlled by convergence along the border of the Meliata Ocean and by contemporaneous divergence along the Middle Atlantic/Penninic rift. During Mid-Cre...

A new genus and species, Mirimordella gracilicruralis gen. et sp. nov., in the subfamily Praemordellinae of Mordellidae, is described and illustrated based on a nearly complete fossil specimen. It is from the Yixian Formation of western Liaoning Province, NE China. The diagnosis of the subfamily Praemordellinae is emended based on this new species. Characters such as simple and linear maxillary...

Well-preserved cranial remains of a small sphenodontian lepidosaur from the Upper Triassic Caturrita Formation of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, are the first record of the genus Clevosaurus Swinton, 1939 from South America. They represent a new species, Clevosaurus brasiliensis, which is distinguished by a very short antorbital region of the skull (corresponding to about 20 per cent of skull lengt...

Current characterizations of early dinosaur evolution are incomplete: existing palaeobiological and phylogenetic scenarios are based on a fossil record dominated by saurischians and the implications of the early ornithischian record are often overlooked. Moreover, the timings of deep phylogenetic divergences within Dinosauria are poorly constrained owing to the absence of a rigorous chronostrat...

Morphological similarities indicate that Palaeozoic problematic tubeworms, e.g. tentaculitids, cornulitids, microconchids, trypanoporids, Anticalyptraea, and Tymbochoos, form a monophyletic group. This group may also include hederelloids. Members of this group share affinities with lophophorates and their evolution could have partly been driven by predation. The extinction of Palaeozoic tubewor...

The first authentic weevil fossils known from Australia, and the oldest known from the southern hemisphere, are described and illustrated on the basis of two specimens recovered from the Upper-Jurassic Talbragar Fish Bed in New South Wales. Talbragarus averyi gen. et sp. n. is classified in the family Nemonychidae based on the presence of scutellary strioles on the elytra, the length and insert...

Large-bodied suspension feeders (planktivores), which include the most massive animals to have ever lived, are conspicuously absent from Mesozoic marine environments. The only clear representatives of this trophic guild in the Mesozoic have been an enigmatic and apparently short-lived Jurassic group of extinct pachycormid fishes. Here, we report several new examples of these giant bony fishes f...