A collection of Cretaceous and Eocene specimens of decapod crustaceans from southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, has yielded the following new taxa: Cowichianassa meckerti, new genus, new species (Callianassidae); Comoxianassa haggarti, new genus, new species (Callianassidae); Preclarocarcinus parvus, new genus, new species (Homolodromiidae); and Nitotacarcinus canadensis, new species (Tumidocarcinidae). Two of the new taxa are callianassid ghost shrimp, each of which displays sexual dimorphism and is well documented from major and minor claws as well as abdomina, unusual in the fossil record and especially unusual for Cretaceous forms. Nitotacarcinus was known previously only from the Eocene of Denmark; thus, the new species extends its paleobiogeographic range dramatically. The layers in which the decapods were collected from the Paleogene Via Appia Beds were deposited in generally high-energy conditions favoring the formation of glauconite. Cuticular structures of Eucorystes platys Schweitzer and Feldmann, 2001, are described.

An enigmatic new genus and species of rove beetle (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) is described as Dolichoxenus newtoni, new genus and species, in early Miocene (Burdigalian) amber from the Dominican Republic. The species is the first fossil oxyteline discovered as an amber inclusion. The genus is apparently a member of the tribe Oxytelini (Staphylinidae: Oxytelinae) and may be allied to the African genus Jerozenia Herman, 2003. The genus exhibits several remarkable apomorphies for the subfamily, and in general possesses features otherwise known in the subfamily for inquilines of ants, suggesting a possible paleobiological association for the genus.

The nine named North American species of the flea genus Megabothris Jordan, 1933 (Siphonaptera: Ceratophyllidae), are discussed with respect to their distribution and host preferences. Four subgenera designated by Smit (1983) are recognized and redescribed in greater detail. Keys to the subgenera and species are provided, and the diagnostic taxonomic features are described and illustrated. A limited bibliography for each species and name combination, including junior synonyms, is included.

A new genus and species of seymouriamorph tetrapod from the Lower Permian deposits of the Boskovice Furrow in Moravia (Czech Republic), Spinarerpeton brevicephalum, new genus, new species, is described in detail, and its cranial reconstruction and phylogenetic position within seymouriamorphs is presented. The skeletal anatomy of Spinarerpeton allows this new taxon to be assigned to the family Discosauriscidae (together with Discosauriscus Kuhn, 1933, Makowskia Klembara, 2005, and Ariekanerpeton Ivakhnenko, 1981). It is distinguished from other ?Uppermost Carboniferous-Lower Permian seymouriamorphs, Utegenia Kuznetsov and Ivachnenko, 1981, Ariekanerpeton, Discosauriscus, Makowskia, and Seymouria Broili, 1904, by the following characters: postorbital portion of skull short; postparietal and tabular abbreviated anteroposteriorly; posterior process of jugal long; squamosal high (posterior portion of cheek deep); basioccipital wide and with anteroposteriorly long bilateral processes; exoccipital high and with slender shaft; anterior margin of iliac blade running obliquely anteroventrally to posterodorsally. A phylogenetic analysis places Spinarerpeton as the sister taxon to the Lower Permian Makowskia within the Discosauriscidae.