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An exceptional articulated skeleton of a new basal neornithischian dinosaur, Minimocursor phunoiensis gen. et sp. nov., was discovered in the Late Jurassic Phu Kradung Formation at the Phu Noi locality, Kalasin Province, Thailand, a highly productive non-marine fossil vertebrate locality of the Khorat Plateau. It is one of the best-preserved dinosaurs ever found in Southeast Asia. Minimocursor phunoiensis gen. et sp. nov. shows a combination of both plesiomorphic and apomorphic characters resembling those of Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous small-bodied ornithischians from China: a low subtriangular boss is projected laterally on the surface of the jugal, the brevis shelf of the ilium is visible in lateral view along its entire length, a distinct supraacetabular flange is present on the pubic peduncle of the ilium, the prepubis tip extends beyond the distal end of the preacetabular process of the ilium, and the manus digit formula is ?-3-4-3-2. The phylogenetic analysis shows that this dinosaur is among the most basal neornithischians. This study provides a better understanding of the early evolution and taxonomic diversity of ornithischians in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1860, the French geologist and palaeontologist Auguste Bravard (1803-1861) circulated a small number of copies of a hand-written and lithographed catalogue of the fossils he had collected in various parts of Argentina over a period of about eight years. Although the existence of this catalogue has been mentioned by various authors, it has never been really published in full. A facsimile reproduction is provided here. The contents of the catalogue and reactions to them are discussed, with special attention to comments in the correspondence between Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin. These comments were largely about Bravard’s identification among his fossils from Argentina of the genera Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium, well known components of the Late Eocene mammal fauna from the Montmartre gypsum, in the Paris Basin. This identification was later shown to be erroneous by Gervais, Burmeister and Ameghino. Bravard’s catalogue also includes what appears to be the first mention of fossil giant ground birds (Phorusrhacidae) in South America.

The origin of the diatoms still remains enigmatic. Their fossil record is scarce until the Late Cretaceous and great divergences exist between molecular data and the earliest fossil evidence. While molecular data indicate an origin during the Triassic or Early Jurassic, early fossil evidence is only from the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous. The discovery of diatoms in French mid-Cretaceous amber by the end of the 2000s already suggested a potential bias in the diatom fossil record as it made older many diatom lineages, the record of which hitherto began at the end of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic/Early Cretaceous fossil record of diatoms is extremely sparse and any new occurrence is important for retracing the evolutionary, palaeogeographical and palaeoenvironmental history of diatoms. Thai amber has yielded a new diatom specimen that has been attributed to the genus Hemiaulus. Fossil assemblages and sedimentological data indicate that Thai amber and its Hemiaulus specimen are Late Jurassic in age. This discovery represents the oldest hitherto known specimen of Hemiaulus and so extends the fossil record of the bipolar diatoms and of the genus Hemiaulus by several dozens of millions of years and brings closer the fossil evidence and molecular data (that estimated an origin of the bipolar diatoms about 150 Ma ago). It reinforces the hypothesis of a pre-Cretaceous fossil diatom records and also supports an origin of the diatoms in shallow coastal environments.