Growing evidence of morphological diversity in angiosperm flowers, seeds and pollen from the mid Cretaceous and the presence of derived lineages from increasingly older geological deposits both imply that the timing of early angiosperm cladogenesis is older than fossil-based estimates have indicated. An alternative to fossils for calibrating the phylogeny comes from divergence in DNA sequence d...

Texada Island (Figure 2-5-1) is with.in Wrangellia. Calcalkaline plutonism of the Coast plutonic complex is superimposed on this terrane. The northern part of the island is made up mainly ct basaltic amygdaloidal flows and pillovr lavas of the ?exad1 Formation (Karmutsen Fbrmation) overlain by massibe grqi limestone and white marble of the Marble Bay Fonnatio I (Quatsino Formation). These Upper...

The diverse and exceptionally well-preserved pycnogonids described herein from the Middle Jurassic La Voulte Lagerstätte fill a 400 Myr gap of knowledge in the evolutionary history of this enigmatic group of marine arthropods. They reveal very close morphological and functional (locomotion, feeding) similarities with present-day pycnogonids and, by contrast, marked differences with all Palaeozo...

The Jurassic (∼201-145 Myr ago) was long considered a warm 'greenhouse' period; more recently cool, even 'icehouse' episodes have been postulated. However, the mechanisms governing transition between so-called Warm Modes and Cool Modes are poorly known. Here we present a new large high-quality oxygen-isotope dataset from an interval that includes previously suggested mode transitions. Our resul...

Tianyuprosbole zhengi, a remarkable new genus and species of Tettigarctidae (Insecta, Hemiptera, Cicadoidea), is described based on a whole-bodied fossil from the Middle Jurassic of Daohugou, northeastern China. The new species possesses a tegmen similar to that of Cicadoprosbole, the type genus of Cicadoprosbolinae, and has an exceedingly expanded pronotum as the extant genus Tettigarcta. This...

The order Trichoptera, so-called “hairy wings”, contains three suborders, namely Annulipalpia, Integripalpia, and Spicipalpia, with over 13,000 known extant species. The order is widely distributed around the world, except for the polar regions (Morse 2012), and has an extensive fossil record, with 37 families, 193 genera, and more than 660 species reported to date (Handlirsch 1906–1908, 1939; ...

Recent bulk sampling and study of museum collections has revealed a high diversity of hybodont sharks from the English Bathonian, with 15 species being recognised. In addition, study of dental and skeletal material from the English Callovian has allowed the diagnosis of a new genus and species, Planohybodus peterboroughensis gen. et sp. nov., allowing the Bathonian species Hybodus grossiconus A...

Two new species, Eotrichocera (Archaeotrichocera) longensis sp. n. and Eotrichocera (Archaeotrichocera) amabilis sp. n. of Trichoceridae are described based on a combination of the following characters: Sc ending proximad of the forking of R2, shape of d cell and A2 rather short and bending sharply toward posterior margin. These fossil specimens were collected from the Middle Jurassic Jiulongsh...

A new species attributed to the genus Parvifuzia Guo & Ren, 2011, Parvifuzia peregrinasp. n., is described from the Middle Jurassic Jiulongshan Formation of Daohugou Village, Inner Mongolia, China. This new species, with apex of wing almost reaching the end of the abdomen and forewing venation with 30-32 veins at margin, broadens the diversity of Parvifuzia. This new species, with strongly curv...