Bittacidae is small family of insects, but a major family of mecopterans, with about half of its genera known from the Mesozoic (Handlirsch, 1939; Sukatsheva, 1990; Novokschonov, 1993, 1997a, 1997b; Ren, 1993, 1997; Ansorge, 1996; Petrulevičius and Martins-Neto, 2001), mainly from the Jurassic. Cenozoic records are scarce and in most cases are assigned to extant genera (Jarzembowski, 1980; Novokschonov, 1993; Petrulevičius, 1998, 1999, 2001a, 2001b).

The goliath grouper (family Serranidae, subfamily Epinephelinae) inhabits tropical and subtropical waters. The Epinephelinae serranids are comprised of about 159 species in 15 genera (Heemstra and Randall, 1993) and are represented in all oceans. According to Heemstra and Randall (1993) the goliath grouper Epinephelus itajara (Lichtenstein, 1822) occurs in the eastern Atlantic Ocean from Florida to Brazil, throughout the Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean Sea, in the western Atlantic Ocean from Senegal to the Congo, and in the eastern Pacific Ocean from the Gulf of California to Peru. The maximum size is about 250 cm total length and they can exceed 320 kg in weight. The grouper Epinephelus lanceolatus (Bloch, 1790) occurs throughout the Indo-Pacific region, from the Red Sea to Algoa Bay, South Africa, and eastward to the Hawaiian and Pitcairn Islands, and in the western Pacific Ocean from southern Japan to Australia in the south. The maximum size is about 231 cm total length (Schultz, 1966) and 400 kg in weight (Fourmanoir and Laboute, 1976). These two species are the largest serranids in the world. Sadovy and Eklund (1999) noted that males reach a maximum age of 26 and females 37 years in a population of E. itajara.

The Matoniaceae is one of the most ancient lineages of extant ferns, with a fossil record that extends from the early Mesozoic. Currently they are considered to be a systematically isolated group that occupies a basal position in the phylogeny of leptosporangiate ferns. Although the extant taxa of Matoniaceae are today restricted to the Malaysian archipelago, a diverse assemblage of matoniaceous ferns occurred on every continent, including Antarctica, during the Mesozoic. Here we describe anatomically preserved, detached fern sori and sporangia from the Fremouw Formation with a combination of characters that affiliates them with the Matoniaceae. Sori are peltate with more than 25 crowded sporangia that display simple maturation. The indusium is multiseriate and centrally attached to a massive, vascularized receptacle. Sporangia are globose to ovoid with vertical, meandering, incomplete annuli, and are helically attached to the receptacle in three to four gyres. This report places this fern as the earliest known occurrence of the Matoniaceae in the fossil record. Characters observed in the sori offer insights regarding organizational patterns of reproductive structures in the family. Additionally, the presence of a peltate indusium in the earliest known representative of the family contradicts the hypothesized evolutionary sequence in development of this structure in the family.

Ceratopea Ulrich, 1911, from the Lower Ordovician of North America, Greenland, and Scotland, is one of a few gastropod genera that was established on the calcareous operculum and not the shell. The operculum is commonly found disassociated, and for many years the nature of the shell itself was unknown (Yochelson, 1975). Yochelson and Bridge (1957, pl. 38, figs. 8–9) illustrated an artificial association of C. unguis with its presumed shell made years earlier by Ulrich and Bridge (Yochelson, written commun.). However, the basal part of the shell is not present. Only one life association of the shell and operculum has been previously documented (Yochelson and Wise, 1972), and that shell is incompletely preserved.

Dispersed megaspores with affinities to aquatic heterosporous ferns are relatively common in mesofossil assemblages from the Early Cretaceous to the Recent. Extant heterosporous ferns are free floating or shallow rooted freshwater plants, with a dominantly tropical to warm-temperate distribution (Tryon and Lugardon, 1991). Their heterosporous life cycle (including both megaspores and microspores) is likely to be an adaptation to their aquatic habit (Collinson, 1991; Hemsley et al., 1999; Kar and Dilcher, 2002). Thus the abundance of heterosporous fern megaspores, or the presence of heterosporous fern macrofossils, within a stratigraphic interval may be indicative of a shallow, calm, freshwater depositional environment (Hall, 1963; Batten et al., 1996; Rich et al., 2001).

Spinous oniscomorph millipedes are rare faunal components of the upper Palaeozoic (Shear, 1997). Amynilyspes (type species A. wortheni Scudder, 1882; OD) is an Upper Carboniferous spinous oniscomorph (pill millipede) which was first described from the Middle Pennsylvanian (Westphalian D equivalent) Fossil-Lagerstätte of Mazon Creek. Later Fritsch (1899) described two species (A. typicus and A. crescens) from the Wesphalian D Gaskohle of Nýřany in Bohemia. More recently A. typicus was recorded from the Stephanian B of the Saarland (Förster, 1973), then from the Stephanian B of the Blanzy-Montceau-les-Mines Basin (Langiaux and Sotty, 1977; Poplin, 1994). Although myriapods were already known to occur in the Montceau-les-Mines Lagerstätte (Langiaux and Sotty, 1976; Rolfe et al., 1982; Poplin and Heyler, 1994) the presence of Amynilyspes at Montceau-les-Mines was first published in a regional publication (“La Physiophile” Langiaux and Sotty, 1976, 1977), and it has passed almost unnoticed.

A unique specimen of the micromorphic fossil lingulate (organophosphatic-shelled) brachiopod Linnarssonia constans Koneva, 1983 from the late Lower Cambrian Shabakty Group of the Malyi Karatau Range in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, preserves evidence of infestation within the mantle cavity by a vermiform animal, leading to the growth of an internal tubular protuberance (Fig. 1) resulting from symbiosis some 520 million years ago. Examples of symbiotic relationships between metazoans in the early Paleozoic are sparse (Conway Morris, 1981, 1990; Conway Morris and Crompton, 1982). Descriptions of a variety of galls and tumorlike swellings in some trilobites extend records back to the Middle Cambrian (Conway Morris, 1990), but their interpretation as traces of endoparasitic activity remains somewhat speculative. Thus galllike swellings on the stems of Silurian echinoderms (Franzen, 1974), vermiform tubes on some early Ordovician dendroid graptolites (Conway Morris, 1990), and various tubes and blisters on graptoloid graptolites (see Bates and Loydell, 2000 for review) are among the hitherto earliest known convincing records of host-parasite relationships within metazoans. Our example reported here predates the oldest of these previous records by approximately 35 to 40 million years, and demonstrates that symbiosis involving complex adaptations (e.g., larval settlement on or within living tissue and exploitation of feeding systems of the host) and codependent life cycles were already established soon after the ‘explosive’ evolutionary radiation of marine metazoans in the early Cambrian. The fossil evidence of infestation on lophophorates is especially sparse, at best. The oldest hitherto undoubted records are both from brachiopods of Devonian age, in the Lower Devonian Emsian Stage of eastern Australia and in the Middle Devonian Givetian Stage of the Holy Cross Mountains in Poland, respectively.

The endolithic life habit has evolved several times in the Bivalvia, e.g., in the superfamilies Modiolopsoidea (family Modiolopsidae), Mytiloidea (family Mytilidae, subfamily Lithophaginae), Arcoidea (family Arcidae), Cardioidea (family Tridacnidae), Veneroidea (family Petricolidae), Gastrochaenoidea, Myoidea (family Myidae), Hiatelloidea, and Pholadoidea (families Pholadidae and Teredinidae) (Otter, 1937; Yonge, 1963; Cox, 1969; Carter, 1978; Kleemann, 1980). The oldest known definite bivalve borings are Ordovician slotlike depressions in stromatoporoids, made by the facultative nestler/borer modiolopsid Corallidomus Whitfield, 1893 [1895] (Pojeta and Palmer, 1976; Wilson and Palmer, 1988). Pojeta and Palmer (1976) and Morton (1990) cited Corallidomus as the ancestor of the Lithophaginae. However, lithophaginids more likely evolved from modiolinid mytilids, which in turn evolved from modiolopsids (Fang and Morris, 1997; Fang, 1998; Carter et al., 2000). Lithophaga-like shells are known from the Carboniferous and Permian, but these Upper Paleozoic examples are not known to have been endolithic (Kleemann, 1983, 1990, table 2). Wilson and Palmer (1998) attributed certain borings without associated shells in Upper Carboniferous limestone cobbles to lithophaginids because the borings are widest near their anterior end and they lack a constricted neck. However, if, as Wilson and Palmer suggested, these borings are not posteriorly truncated, then their openings are relatively much wider than typical lithophaginid borings. One boring illustrated by Wilson and Palmer (1998, fig. 4) has an irregular anterior cross-sectional shape that is unlike lithophaginid and gastrochaenid borings. This irregularity recalls the Early Ordovician ichnospecies Gastrochaenolites oelandicus Ekdale and Bromley, 2001, which is similarly vase-shaped. Ekdale and Bromley (2001) noted that the latter boring predates known endolithic bivalves, so they attributed it to an unknown invertebrate.

Modern pinnoideans, or “pen shells,” are shallowly to deeply endobyssate, equivalved, edentulous, ham-shaped bivalves with a single, slightly submerged, opisthodetic ligament. Malacologists have generally regarded pinnids as closely related to the pterioid superfamily Pterioidea, especially its Paleozoic family Pterineidae (e.g., Zittel, 1927, p. 446; Thiele, 1935, p. 803; Pojeta, 1978; Waller, 1978). As early as 1890, Jackson suggested that pinnids evolved from the Silurian-Permian pterineid Leptodesma Hall, 1883. More recently, Pojeta (1978, p. 239) speculated that they evolved from the pterineid Pteronitella Billings, 1874 (a Silurian genus similar to Leptodesma) through the morphologically intermediate Devonian Palaeopinna Hall, 1883. The hinge and ligament of Palaeopinna remain unknown, so its family-level placement is uncertain (Newell and LaRocque, 1969, p. N301). However, Leptodesma and Pteronitella have hinge teeth, inequivalved shells, and a duplivincular ligament similar to other pterineids (Newell and LaRocque, 1969, p. N299–N301; Pojeta, 1978, p. 239; Pojeta and Runnegar, 1985, fig. 16D; Carter, 1990a, p. 205; 1990b, p. 334).