Revisión de Douvillininae (Brachiopoda) de la Zona Centroibérica Meridional (Devónico Superior, España)

La subfamilia Douvillininae en el Frasniense de la Zona Centroibérica meridional está representada por el género Douvillina, al que se atribuyen tres especies: Douvillina alvarezi, D. delta y D. radiata. Se propone enmendar la diagnosis del genero Douvillina que aparece en la edición revisada del Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (Part H, Brachiopoda), en el sentido de admitir mayor variabilidad en la convexidad de las valvas. Se discute la atribución de D. alvarezi al género así enmendado y se incorporan a la especie ejemplares estratigráficamente más jóvenes que los del material típico.

“Palaeoentomology”: A modern journal for a science dealing with the past

Palaeoentomology started in the late XVIIIth century, shortly after the 10th edition of Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae (the foundation of modern taxonomy), when papers on the curiosities of insects entombed in fossil resins were published. The beginning of XIXth century (with the growing interest in geological sciences and prehistoric life) witnessed the first attempts to study and describe insects from sedimentary rocks. This discipline then developed during the XIXth and beginning of the XXth centuries; and resulted in some major works and reviews (summarizing the knowledge on fossil insects and other terrestrial arthropods) published in the geological and biological literature. The XXth century was a period of relatively slow but constant development in palaeoentomology, during which the famous “Treatise on invertebrate paleontology: Arthropoda 4. Superclass Hexapoda” (cataloguing the knowledge on fossil insects) was published (Carpenter, 1992). At the beginning of XXIst century, palaeoentomology grew significantly and exponentially; and two major manuals (“History of insects” and “Evolution of the insects”) were published (Rasnitsyn & Quicke, 2002; Grimaldi & Engel, 2005, respectively). These manuals helped to encourage more students and researchers to work on fossil insects and other terrestrial arthropods.

Bringing Sternberg Museum Fossils into the 21st Century

The Sternberg Museum of Natural History (FHSM) has a rich paleontology history extending back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. From the 1902 to 1992, the museum was housed on the Fort Hays State University campus. FHSM outgrew the campus capacity and moved to a new location that afforded the museum significant space for collections and exhibits. Just as the museum had to change locations with its growing collections, so too must the means of care for the collections change and be updated. In order to improve the state of the paleontology collections and make them more accessible, the FHSM’s Chief Curator pursued grants to achieve these goals. Two grants later, FHSM is well on its way to a digitized paleontology collection. One National Science Foundation (NSF) grant focuses on basic collections improvement: transcription of hand-written records, cataloging the specimen backlog, and imaging specimens. One of the most important updates is the addition of the relational database, CollectiveAccess. This database enables FHSM to have a public-facing, searchable database that can show not only specimen data but also images and 3D scans of fossils. The second grant is an NSF funded Integrated Digitized Biocollection (iDigBio) collaborative research project. This grant focuses on fossils collected from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway fossils. The digitization goals of the collections improvement grant work synergistically with the iDigBio grant. When preparing to start work on these two projects, workflows and how-to guides were developed to fit the needs of both grants. This synergy increased efficiency for training student workers and aided quality control. In regards to the new relational database, many considerations had to be made: what is the nature of the data, with whom are we sharing data, what are the data standards, what controls need to be in place to increase ease of use. Digitization of the collection started with transcription of hand-written records into a spreadsheet. The data from those record books and ledgers was cross referenced with the specimen cards to check for accuracy. Between the two grants, FHSM has two photography stations, four undergraduate students, and two graduate students. This small army of students, along with the Collections Manager, have succeeded in digitizing the invertebrate paleontology collection and have made significant progress on the vertebrate collection. Once the database is finalized, the images produced by these students will be uploaded and shared with aggregators such as iDigBio and accessible via the FHSM website.

Ichnology of the Devonian (Emsian) Campbellton Formation, New Brunswick, Canada

The Campbellton Formation has long been known to yield a fossil assemblage of Devonian (Emsian) fish and eurypterids at its westernmost exposure near Campbellton and Atholville, and a well described flora and early land animal fauna toward its easternmost exposure near Dalhousie Junction. Although the body fossil assemblage (paleobotany, vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology), paleoecology and paleoenvironmental context of the formation have been extensively studied, ichnofossils are rare and have not been described previously. Fossils from the vertebrate and eurypterid bearing ‘Atholville Beds’ contain a low diversity ichnofossil assemblage represented by three ichnotaxa:Monomorphichnus, ?Taenidium and Helminthoidichnites. Monomorphichnus is proposed here as being produced by the produced by the activity of the eurypterid Pterygotus anglicus.