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The cheilostome bryozoan genus Taylorius Gordon, 2014 comprises six named living and fossil species from New Zealand and one Recent species from South Africa. Taylorus nom. nov. is proposed as a replacement name for Taylorius Gordon, 2014 (Bryozoa), a secondary homonym of Taylorius Britton, 1960 (Arthropoda: Coleoptera). Here, we describe Taylorus patagonicus sp. nov. from the early Miocene of Argentine Patagonia, and two new living species from New Zealand, Taylorus microperforatus sp. nov. and Taylorus alatus sp. nov. These new finds extend the known range of Taylorus nom. nov. to areas formerly comprising the Gondwanan supercontinent. Cladistic analysis suggests that there is a basal divergence within Taylorus nom. nov. in which an extant lineage consisting of species from South Africa and New Zealand is the sister group to the remaining species. Two New Zealand fossil taxa, T. masoni and T. waiparaensis, were not recovered in an exclusively Zealandian clade. The early Miocene New Zealand species T. masoni nested with three Recent Zealandian species, this subclade being sister to a group comprising the remaining New Zealand species and that from Patagonia. These different lineages suggest that Taylorus nom. nov. originated in the Paleogene, perhaps in the early Oligocene or late Eocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family Inversiulidae, and its only genus Inversiula, are unique among cheilostome bryozoans owing to the reverse orientation of the operculum, which hinges distally instead of proximally. Inversiula currently includes four extant and one fossil species almost exclusively distributed in the Southern Hemisphere. A phylogenetic analysis of the Inversiulidae based on morphological characters was performed, showing the existence of two clades with contrasting development of the frontal shield. As a result of this analysis, Parainversiula gen. nov. is erected to contain inversiulid species with an umbonuloid frontal shield structure and fewer than 30 central spoked pores. Two poorly known fossil species from the early Miocene of Patagonia (Argentina), originally assigned to the genus Microporella, are here redescribed as Parainversiula sp. and P. chubutiana (Canu) comb. nov. The historical, time-calibrated biogeography of Inversiulidae was estimated using an event-based, multi-model quantitative analysis. The analyses estimated that Australasia was the ancestral area of Parainversiula and a dispersion of the genus into South America occurred between the late Eocene and Oligocene (c. 23–42 Ma), an event that could have been helped by the origin of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]