Our ability to reconstruct the marine planktonic diatom early Paleogene history is hampered by decreased preservation as well as by observation bias. Collecting new diatom data in various Paleocene samples from legacy deep-sea sediment sections allows us to correct for the latter. The results show that the Paleocene deep-sea diatoms seem in fact as diverse and abundant as in the later Eocene while exhibiting very substantial survivorship of Cretaceous species up until the Eocene.

New fungus weevils, Eduardoxenus unicus gen. et sp. nov. is described from late Eocene Rovno amber (Klesov, Rovno region). This fossil fungus weevil is the oldest finding of the tribe Valenfriesiini in fossil state and the first record of the Choraginae from the Eocene ambers. The new genus differs from the genera Cyptoxenus, Valenfriesia and Neoxenus. Palaeogeographical and palaeoclimatological importance of finding Valenfriesiini in Rovno amber is discussed.

Amber is fossilized resin and so has a terrestrial source; however, very rarely have marine microorganisms been reported, and only in a few amber pieces. We aim to understand how this rare phenomenon could be possible. Several different mechanisms were proposed, and we then tested the wind-blown idea via our experiments on resin-rich forests on the coast of New Caledonia. These forests encompass the best model for the Cretaceous ambers that contain these marine microorganisms.

Two morphometric methods are applied for the analysis of suture lines in Early Carboniferous ammonoids: (1) classic metric data using multivariate statistic methods and (2) outline data are analysed using the elliptic Fourier analysis. Both methods lead to similar results and demonstrate ontogenetic and phylogenetic trends in these ammonoids: (1) a general decrease in the amplitude of lobes and saddles, (2) a proportional widening of the external lobe, and (3) a heightening of the median saddle.

We give closure on the study cycle of turtle material from Vic area, Middle–Late Eocene, Ebro Basin, Catalonia, Spain. Numerous comparisons with poorly known taxa are carried out, including a first description of the Eochelone shell via E. voltragana. Different swimming evolutionary states and different cheloniid subgroups Osonachelus and Eochelone are described, as well as dispersion Gondwanan forms from Africa and around European coasts.

A new species of fossil mite, Immensmaris chewbaccei, is described from the 100 million-year-old (Cretcaeous) Burmese amber of Myanmar. It belongs to the modern family Smarididae and is of particular note for its enormous size, with a body length of about a centimetre. This makes it the largest example of an erythraeoid mite (the wider group to which it belongs), and in general it is one of the biggest mites ever to be recorded.

Duboisia santeng is an extinct Indonesian antelope with short horn cores that sprout up like bunny-ears. A newly discovered skull of Duboisia from north-eastern Thailand confirms that the genus is no longer endemic to Indonesia, and supports a strong faunal interchange between the South East Asian continent and islands before or at the beginning of the Pleistocene.

Pig-nosed turtles are an enigmatic group of reptiles with an extensive fossil record across the globe. The group is known to have inhabited North America during the Eocene, about 55 to 40 million years ago, but information is still limited regarding the exact morphology of these turtles, as remains are few. Here we document the morphology of the only known skull of a North American pig-nosed turtle based on a fossil from the middle Eocene Washakie Formation of Sweetwater County, Wyoming, USA.