Spitsbergen shows a several kilometers thick, mostly siliciclastic Devonian sequence. In this sequence, the Wood Bay Formation represents a typical Old Red Sandstone megafacies unit of Early Devonian age (Pragian-Emsian). It outcrops in the Andrée Land Block (often wrongly designated as the “main Devonian graben”) in NW Spitsbergen. Its stratigraphy has been mostly established in two areas of this block, that is, in the Woodfjorden area in the north, and in the Dicksonfjorden-Austfjorden area in the south. A revision of the pteraspidiform heterostracan vertebrates has been carried out in both areas. Eight different fossil assemblages are defined, five for the Woodfjorden area (WA), and three for the Dicksonfjorden-Austfjorden area (DAA), that enable the correlation of the Sigurdfjellet and Kapp Kjeldsen “faunal divisions” of the lower Wood Bay Formation (in WA) with the Austfjorden Member (in DAA), and the Keltiefjellet “faunal division” of the upper Wood Bay Formation (in WA) with the Dicksonfjorden Member (in DAA). Unfortunately, pteraspids do not help with correlation between the uppermost parts of the Wood Bay Formation in the north and south of the Andrée Land Block. These results are used also for a more precise correlation with the heterostracan-bearing, Early Devonian, Old Red Sandstone series of Novaya Zemlya and Severnaya Zemlya in the Russian Arctic. They also confirm that Spitsbergen and those Russian archipelagos were elements of the Early Devonian, palaeobiogeographic Arctic Province.

New taxa of thoracican cirripedes are recorded from the Eocene Mo Clay of northwest Jutland, Denmark, namely Stipilepas molerensis Carriol n. gen., n. sp., a scalpelliform gooseneck barnacle, and Plesiobrachylepas jutlandica Carriol n. gen., n. sp., a brachylepadomorph sessile form. This material is of importance in that the former not only represents the first extinct example of the tribe Ashinkailepadini, it also is the second fossil neolepadine, while the latter adds to the diversity of the family Brachylepadidae, which previously embraced only three genera. The geological context of these taxa is outlined and their phylogenetic interest discussed.

Durant son premier voyage en Angleterre en 1818, Georges Cuvier étudia une collection de fossiles du Miocène d'Öhningen (Pays de Bade, Allemagne) que le British Museum venait d'acquérir. Cuvier, qui avait prouvé l'existence d'une salamandre géante dans la faune d'Öhningen, cherchait à s'opposer à l'opinion communément admise selon laquelle la faune ichtyologique rencontrée dans ce gisement correspondait à la faune encore vivante dans les eaux douces de l'Allemagne et de la Suisse. L'intérêt de Cuvier pour cette question est attesté par un ensemble de dessins de poissons d'Öhningen retrouvés dans ses archives conservées à la bibliothèque centrale du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (Paris). D'après le témoignage de Louis Agassiz qui étudia à la fois ces dessins à Paris en 1832 et les fossiles originaux lors de son premier voyage à Londres en 1834, les spécimens représentés proviennent de la collection de Johann Conrad Ammann (1724–1811), médecin à Schaffhouse en Suisse. Ces dessins, réalisés en 1821 et 1822 par deux brillants artistes naturalistes anglais de l'époque, John Curtis (1791–1862) et Thomas Lewin (1774-après 1840), furent communiqués à Cuvier par Charles Dietrich Eberhard König (1774–1851), conservateur au British Museum. Ces dessins témoignent de la volonté de Cuvier à traiter la question des poissons fossiles, sujet qu'il abandonna finalement juste avant sa mort au profit de Louis Agassiz. Ils ont également permis de retrouver au Natural History Museum, London, plusieurs fossiles de la collection Ammann dont l'origine historique était inconnue jusqu'à maintenant.

Here we describe a new species of Konobelodon Lambert, 1990 — a poorly known tetralophodont shovel-tusked proboscidean — from the Late Miocene of the Linxia Basin, China. Detailed osteological anatomies of skulls, teeth, and partial postcranial bones of the new taxon, Konobelodon robustus n. sp., are described and detailed morphological comparisons with the other species of Konobelodon (K. atticus (Wagner, 1857) = Mastodon grandincisivus, Schlesinger 1917, and K. britti (Lambert, 1990)) and other gomphotheres are conducted. The skull and jaw-closing muscles of a juvenile individual of the new species are reconstructed and the body mass is estimated based on its limb bones. Phylogenetic analysis of genera within Elephantimorpha results in three most parsimonious trees, of which two support a sister-group relationship between Konobelodon and Platybelodon, within a monophyletic Amebelodontinae. The new results enhance our knowledge on the anatomy and phylogeny of Konobelodon, and indicate pronounced diversification and strong parallel evolution in the amebelodontines.

Early Pliocene suids of Europe are generally rare and poorly preserved, but some exceptional fossils have been found at Roussillon, France, Villafranca d'Asti, Italy, and Kvabebi, Georgia. We here describe and interpret an almost complete skull of a small suid from Musaitu and a mandible fragment from Dermenji, Moldova, which add precious information to the data base concerning these small European Pliocene suids, here attributed to Dasychoerus arvernensis (Croizet & Jobert, 1828). The Moldovan fossils provide an important biogeographic link between the Western European and Asian Plio-Pleistocene suines. The Musaitu skull, in particular, shows the elongated snout, enlarged canine flanges, pneumatised zygomatic arch and low slung incisor row characteristic of the genus Dasychoerus Gray, 1873. This species is important because it represents the group from which the African Kolpochoerus Van Hoepen & Van Hoepen, 1932 lineage probably emerged. The latter group is useful for biochronology because, having arrived in Africa, where it has been called Kolpochoerus deheinzelini Brunet & White, 2001 (in fact a junior synonym of Dasychoerus arvernensis) it evolved rapidly in dimensions and dental morphology. During the Pliocene the genus Dasychoerus, already adapted to tropical and sub-tropical climates, was widespread in mid-latitude Eurasia and Africa, but when much of mid-latitude Eurasia became boreal during the Plio-Pleistocene, the range of Dasychoerus shrank equatorwards, giving way to boreally adapted Sus scrofa Linnaeus, 1758 over much of its former territory, leaving a disjunct distribution of its descendants in Africa (Hylochoerus Thomas, 1904, possibly Potamochoerus Gray, 1854) and the tropical islands of the Far East (Dasychoerus).