Many organic-rich marine mudstones, which are key hydrocarbon sources, were deposited on continent margins in mid-water oxygen-minimum zones (OMZs) that expanded and intensified during oceanic anoxic events (OAEs). Other marine hydrocarbon sources include platform and forearc black shales that record trans-continental, long-erm anoxic/dysoxic environments with no modern analog. Their explanation as recording deep-water, Black...

Organo-sedimentary deposits that result from fine-grained sediment trapping, binding, and likely precipitation (of carbonate) by microbes in flat-mat, branching, and dome-shaped constructions are termed microbialites. They were first identified as stromatolites by paleontologists well before the discovery of cyanobacteria that build the same kinds of structures in contemporary settings around the world. Earth’s earliest life f...

The occurrence of a likely graptolite in lowest Wuliuan strata of the Franconian Forest almost certainly records the oldest known graptolithoid hemichordate in West Gondwana and possibly the oldest graptolite presently known. The fossil is a delicate, erect, apparently unbranched rhabdosome with narrow thecae tentatively assigned to the poorly known genus Ovetograptus of the Dithecodendridae. This report includes an overview o...

Eccaparadoxides is a geographically widely distributed trilobite genus that occurs in the middle part of the Cambrian System. However, the systematically important morphologic characteristics that can be used to differentiate taxa are often problematical in their application. A review of the large number (over 30) of significant species or forms assigned to Eccaparadoxides clearly indicates that only the pygidia offer fairly r...