Very well preserved gastropods, with preserved color banding, are common in a newly discovered site in the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field. The fossils occur in calcareous silty shales of the Middle Pennsylvanian Kendrick Shale Member of the Breathitt Formation. Three genera of gastropods, Bellerophon, Straparollus, and Ianthanopsis, have been found with preserved color patterns.

William C. Darrah, educator, geologist, botanist, and historian, loved life, and he chose to share with others his genuine enjoyment of discovery and learning through his writing and teaching. His A Critical Review of the Upper Carboniferous Floras of the Eastern United States (1970) and nearly a hundred professional papers made his name familiar to many paleontologists in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States. It is interesting to note that early in his career Bill developed an interest in the early conifers, especially Walchia. At the time of his death, he had just completed a manuscript with Paul Lyons, “The Earliest Conifers in North America: Upland and/or Paleoclimatic Indicators?,” “which has been accepted for publication in PALAIOS. Most recently, having attended the International Geological Conference in the United States in 1933, Bill had hoped to present a paper on the Dunkard at the July 1989 IGC in Washington, D.C.

When the existence of juveniles, eggs, and nesting sites of the hadrosaur Maiasaura peeblesorum and the hypsilophodontid Orodromeus makelai from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of western Montana were reported, they provided powerful insights into the reproductive strategies of these animals (Horner and Makela, 1979; Horner, 1982, 1984; Horner and Weishampel, 1988). Dinosaur eggs had been known since 1923 when nests attributed to the ceratopsian Protoceratops andrewsi were discovered in Mongolia (Brown and Schlaikjer, 1940), but there was no direct information about behavior or survival strategies in hatchling dinosaurs until the Maiasaura and Orodromeus findings. These recent discoveries have generated a number of hypotheses on the reproductive behavior of dinosaurs relating to the extent of parental care, fidelity in nesting sites, and the aggregation of juveniles into groups.

The coral fauna of the Upper Mississippian (Chesterian) Pitkin Formation was described by Easton (1943) and, more recently, by Webb (1987), who defined two coral faunules. The lower faunule occurs throughout the Pitkin outcrop belt from northeastern Oklahoma to north-central Arkansas. The upper faunule has been recognized only in north-central Arkansas where a higher part of the Pitkin is preserved. Equivalent strata have apparently been removed to the west by the pre-Pennsylvanian regional unconformity that differentially truncates Chesterian strata across the Ozark uplift. Thus the upper faunule is less well known than the lower faunule. The purpose of this note is to describe a new tabulate coral from the upper faunule in Searcy County, Arkansas.

The late Jurassic Paulchoffatiinae, one of two named subfamilies of the family Paulchoffatiidae (suborder Plagiaulacoidea), are generally recognized as the most primitive known, undoubted multituberculates (e.g., Hahn, 1969; Clemens and Kielan-Jaworowska, 1979; Hahn and Hahn, 1983; Hahn et al., 1989). Despite the primitive morphology of members of this subfamily (Paulchoffatia and Pseudobolodon), three features have been posited as autapomorphic for the subfamily (or family), and thus to preclude it from the ancestry of later multituberculates: 1) the distribution of cusps on M2 (Hahn, 1969, 1971); 2) the complex structure of I3 (Hahn, 1969, 1971); and 3) the position of M2 relative to M1 (Van Valen, 1976; Clemens and Kielan-Jaworowska, 1979; Hahn, 1987). Van Valen (1976) argued that the first two features are not unequivocally autapomorphic for paulchoffatiines and that they could, and indeed should, be considered primitive for the order. Hahn (1977) responded to Van Valen's assessment but Clemens and Kielan-Jaworowska (1979, p. 138) opined that “neither argument is particularly compelling” in light of the poor early record of multituberculates and the consequent lack of knowledge concerning morphological variability.

Although limpets are fairly common in shelly deposits, there are no reports of limpets preserved in the living position from the fossil record. The life style of capped-shaped limpet gastropods almost precludes preservation in a living position. Herbivorous alga-feeding limpets live attached to a firm surface. The surfaces of attachment vary widely from rocky surfaces, shells, or seaweed. Upon death the shells become detached and are incorporated in the nearby sediments or are transported to a site of final deposition.

Over the past few years, the authors, along with colleagues, have documented the late Cenomanian and early Turonian ammonite faunas of the Western Interior region of the United States and its extension into Texas (Cobban, 1987, 1988a, 1988b; Cobban and Hook, 1983; Cobban et al., 1989; Kennedy, 1988; Kennedy and Cobban, 1988a, 1988b; Kennedy et al., 1989; Kennedy et al., 1987; Kennedy and Cobban, 1989, 1990). In these works the authors have recognized a series of micromorph genera and species, taxa that are genuinely diminutive and adult at diameters of 6.5–38 mm. These taxa show characteristic features indicating them to be adult, such as crowding of septa and reduction or loss of ornament at or near the aperture. Where large numbers of specimens are available, dimorphism can be demonstrated (as in Nannometoicoceras Kennedy, 1988, p. 63, with Metoicoceras acceleratum Hyatt, 1903, p. 127, PI. 14, figs. 11–14, as type species) so that they are indeed micromorphs, not simply juveniles or microconchs of “normal-sized” taxa. Such micromorphs are known from other parts of the world (e.g., Protacanthoceras Spath, 1923; see Wright and Kennedy, 1980, 1987; Kennedy and Wright, 1985; Lymaniceras Matsumoto, 1965, and Haboroceras Toshimitsu, 1988). Not uncommonly, these micromorphs are found associated with “normal-sized” taxa that have similar early ontogenetic stages to the co-occurring micromorph. There is little doubt that the evolutionary origin of these small forms was through progenesis and precocious sexual maturation in which the early developmental stage of the ancestral taxon is preserved to a much later developmental stage of the descendant. The latter matured at much smaller size, and new characters are present in the latest phragmocone and body chamber, or sometimes only in the latter. These micromorphs are not unique to the Western Interior seaway, but are better represented there than elsewhere. This may simply be due to the remarkable preservation in concretions in the mudrocks of the Interior sequence, or it may reflect a repeated evolutionary strategy to deal with the stresses of the atypical environments developed there (Hattin, 1986). It also perhaps removed some of the taxa concerned from competition for trophic resources with their “normal-sized” contemporaries, although it could equally be argued that it turned them into suitably sized prey.

Some species of late Paleozoic bellerophontacean gastropods attained unusually large sizes. Yochelson (1960) described several Permian species from the American Southwest having shells more than 50 mm long, and noted that the largest North American specimen is an incomplete Leonardian steinkern more than 90 mm long, from the Glass Mountains of Texas. A Permian species of Bellerophon from Japan is up to 120 mm wide (Yochelson, 1960), and several Mississippian and Pennsylvanian species in the 90+ mm range are also known (Weir, 1931; Kues, 1987). Steinkerns of this size are not uncommon in Wolfcampian and Leonardian formations in New Mexico, but because of lack of preserved shell material and/or occurrence in massive limestones they are rarely collected and little is known about them. In this note we report and illustrate an unusually well preserved but incomplete Guadalupian bellerophontid from southern New Mexico. It is considerably larger than the specimens mentioned above, and appears to be the largest late Paleozoic bellerophontid yet reported.

The purpose of the present statement is to announce discovery of a well-preserved and potentially diverse Lower Permian ammonoid fauna from south-central Thailand. Previous Thai records of Permian ammonoids lack descriptive detail (e.g., Yanagida, 1988), but two sparse Permian occurrences from nearby areas in Malaysia have been described recently by Lee (1980). Closest similarities of the Thai material are with faunas from the Pamir (Leonova and Dmitriev, 1989) and with our undescribed collections from south Xinjiang.

Cyclocystoids (range: Ordovician–Devonian), particularly of Devonian age, are extremely rare fossils and stratigraphic ranges of most taxa are little known. For this reason, the discovery of a single fragmentary specimen referable to Sievertsia (Smith and Paul, 1982) from the Traverse Formation (Middle Devonian) in Cass County, northern Indiana, deserves mention. Furthermore, the precise stratigraphic position of the cyclocystoid occurrence is documented by a combination of significant conodont and brachiopod faunas. The specimen was collected in situ on a weathered surface from a position approximately 1.2 m above the base of the type section of the Miami Bend Lithofacies (Cooper and Phelan, 1966, p. 6, U.S. National Museum Locality 391a; Orr, 1969, p. 338, Locality 5) exposed at the top of the west wall of the old France Stone Company quarry (inactive) on the north side of U.S. Highway 24, 3.2 km east of Logansport, SW¼, NE¼, sec. 27, T27N, R2E, Cass County, Indiana (Logansport 7½′ quadrangle).