The micropalaeontology collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris (France) house the abundant and diverse collections gathered by Maurice Lys, geologist at the Institut Français du Pétrole from 1945 to 1971. Samples from the Middle Permian of the occidental Hindu Kush (central Afghanistan) collected and studied by Lys and his colleagues have been processed for ostracods study. Here, ostracods are for the first time reported from the Middle Permian (Roadian and Wordian) carbonate sequence of central Afghanistan, corresponding to 31 species distributed into 12 genera. Only small portions of the original samples have been treated, explaining the low abundance of the assemblage and the necessity to keep most of the species in open nomenclature. This discovery is nevertheless of major importance as it extends the palaeobiogeographic distribution of ostracods during the Middle Permian and further increases their palaeobiodiversity on the brink of the two extinction events at the end of the Palaeozoic. Palaeoenvironmental preferences of the recovered taxa seem to record an increase in the water depth from the east to the west over the studied area. The first analysis of ostracods provincialism during the Roadian is performed and identifies two clusters with strong similarity between South China Block and North American Platform and between central Afghanistan and Indochina Block.

The type specimens of Polystomella minutaReuss, 1865, have not been found in the Reuss collection of the Museum of Vienna. No topotypic specimen is known and all the subsequent designations of this species in the Oligocene and Miocene are misidentifications. Polystomella falunica Allix, 1913, was discovered again in 1968, and cited in 1980, 1989, 1997, 2009 by one of the authors of this study (JPM) and also a few others (see furthers). It is present in the upper Oligocene of the Paratethys and frequent in the Miocene of France and Paratethys, rare in the Pliocene of France. A neotype is here selected and described.

The study in course of the materials rescued from the fire that in 1978, destroyed much of the palaeontological collections of the current National Museum of Natural History and Science (Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência) of Lisbon, has allowed the rediscovery of several Cretaceous cephalopods (and the corresponding original labels) that the renowned palaeontologist Alcide d'Orbigny, according to the wishes of the emperor Napoleon III, offered to the king Pedro V in 1855, in order to re-establish the good relationships between France and Portugal. These historical specimens correspond to nautiloids: Angulithes triangularisde Montfort, 1808; ammonoids: Phylloceras (Hypophylloceras) tethys (d'Orbigny, 1840), Ptychophylloceras (Semisulcatoceras) semisulcatum (d'Orbigny, 1840), Neolissoceras grasianum (d'Orbigny, 1840), Pleurohoplites (Pleurohoplites) renauxianus (d'Orbigny, 1840), Acanthoceras rhotomagense (Brongniart, 1822), Coilopoceras requienianus (d'Orbigny, 1840) and Turrilites (Turrilites) costatusLamarck, 1801; and belemnoids: Duvalia dilatata (de Blainville, 1827), Hibolithes subfusiformis (Raspail, 1829) and Belemnitella mucronata (von Schlotheim, 1813). All of them come from outcrops relevant for the French stratigraphy, and they seem to have been selected by d'Orbigny with a representative criterion.

A sandstone slab bearing plant macro-remains was rediscovered during recent investigations led in the buildings of the old Musée Ignon-Fabre (Mende) which were closed in 1995 and emptied in 2003. The study of the slab clearly allows it to be identified as the holotype of Weltrichia fabreiSaporta, 1891 which has been considered destroyed since the end of the 20^th Century. Gaston de Saporta described this Bennettitalean fructification based on a cast and considered the type locality as Rhaetian in age. In the present paper, based on the holotype, W. fabrei was revised in order to describe and illustrate the specimen in detail. It consists of a cup with one whorl of at least seven, slender and elongated sporophylls that apically curve inwards. Sporophylls display a dorsal median ridge, an acute apex and look leathery. Distally, the adaxial surface of sporophylls bears up to seven, elongated, tips forming branched structures comparable to the large pollen bearing organs observed among Upper Triassic/ Lower Jurassic Bennettitalean fructifications. Here, the chronostratigraphic assignment of the type locality is discussed considering a Rhaetian?/early Hettangian age for the sandstone bearing W. fabrei. The depositional environment of W. fabrei was probably continental with a vast floodplain in which channels periodically occurred.

Three unpublished fossil primate specimens from Patagonia (Argentina) are reported here. They are part of the Tournouër collection housed at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, France, and correspond to a partial mandible collected in 1902, and one upper deciduous premolar and one upper permanent molar collected in 1899. The partial mandible comes from the early Miocene sediments in the Coyle river area (Santa Cruz Province, Argentina), and is attributable to Homunculus patagonicusAmeghino, 1891. It adds to the several specimens assigned to Homunculus patagonicus that were collected since the times of the Ameghino brothers in the area, between the rivers Coyle and Gallegos. Two other dental specimens came from Colhue-Huapi (Chubut province, Argentina). Both are here assigned to Mazzonicebus almendraeKay, 2010, the only known fossil primate in the early Miocene levels of Gran Barranca, in the Colhue-Huapi area. This contribution provides new morphological information concerning the mandible and dentition of HomunculusAmeghino, 1891, and the first evidence of the deciduous dentition of MazzonicebusKay, 2010.

Ediacaran fossils are now largely known in different parts of the world. However, some countries are poorly documented on these remains. Thus, rare fossils from the Neoproterozoic Histria Formation of central Dobrogea (Romania) have been reported. Two specimens with discoid imprints are described here in detail and assigned to the typical Ediacaran species Beltanelliformis brunsae Menner in Keller, Menner, Stepanov & Chumakov, 1974. This palaeontological development confirms both the large geographical distribution of this species and the Ediacaran age of the Histria Formation.

Despite the rich fossil record of decapod crustaceans in Florida, there are still several stratigraphic intervals for which almost no fossil decapods have been reported. Here we document the occurrence of two species of eubrachyuran crabs from the Pliocene Pinecrest Member of the Tamiami Formation, Sarasota County, based on complete and well preserved dorsal carapaces: the leucosiid Persephona cf. P. subovata (Rathbun, 1893), and the xanthid Paractaea cf. P. nodosa (Stimpson, 1860). The specimen of Paractaea cf. P. nodosa represents the second fossil record of the genus and the oldest occurrence known to date. The specimen of Persephona cf. P. subovata, despite its geographic occurrence, it is more similar anatomically to some extant tropical Eastern Pacific species than to any of the species occurring in Florida today. It is possible that ancestral populations of P. subovata were present in the tropical Eastern Pacific and western Atlantic before the water masses were isolated after the final closure of the currents connecting both water masses, and that the fossil Persephona here studied is part of a relict population of P. subovata that disappeared in the Atlantic after the late Pliocene.

An articulated skeleton of a palaeospinacid shark from the Saint-Pô Formation (Albian, upper Lower Cretaceous) of the Boulonnais (northern France) is described and illustrated for the first time, inclusive of tooth vascularisation and histology. The specimen comprises portions of the neurocanium, splanchnocranium, pectoral girdle, vertebrae, numerous teeth and about 12 000 dermal denticles, but no dorsal fin spines. Its dental morphology is unique in combining relatively smooth crown surfaces in anterior teeth, a strongly reticulated ornamentation in latero-posterior teeth and an intermediate ornamentation in larger antero-lateral teeth. The differential diagnoses of three nominal species of SynechodusWoodward, 1888 that have often been recorded from Albian strata (i.e., S. dubrisiensis (Mackie, 1863), S. nitidus Woodward, 1911 and S. tenuisWoodward, 1889) were based mainly on tooth ornamentation. This observation would favour the conspecificity of these three forms, as has been suggested previously by several authors. However, it does not rule out the possibility of more than one species of Synechodus in the Albian of the Anglo-Paris Basin. Such divergent ornamentation might be characteristic of more than one species, meaning that differentiation would be more complex. Awaiting a thorough revision of these taxa, a review of their taxonomic history is presented here. For the time being, the specimen from the Boulonnais is left in open nomenclature and referred to as Synechodus sp.