Exceptionally well-preserved arthropod cuticle from the Mount Cap Formation (Northwest Territories) is described on the basis of several thousand specimens. Various elements of crustacean-type mouthparts are identified, including the molar (grinding) surfaces of mandibles, some 53 categories of cuticular projection, and complex setal armatures indicative of precise and versatile particle-handling abilities. The reconstructed feeding apparatus of the Mount Cap taxon is fundamentally more sophisticated than those of its contemporaries, and thus substantially expands the known ecological repertoire of Cambrian arthropods, while specific characters of the mandibular ornamentation indicate a phylogenetic position within the crown group of Pancrustacea, and provide the strongest evidence for this clade earlier than the late Cambrian. Scaling from the size of the mandibles predicts an overall body length of several centimetres. This suggests that the absence of comparably fine-scale anatomical detail from non-microscopic taxa preserved elsewhere in the Cambrian fossil record has strongly biased the reconstruction of early arthropod evolution. A preliminary systematic account is provided of a diverse organic-walled microfossil assemblage from the Forteau Formation of western Newfoundland. Important new fossils include geometric clusters of interconnected “acritarchs” that may represent an independent origination of green algal multicellularity, and organic components of hexactinellid-type spicules which contribute crucial data to the emerging pattern of extinct combinations of spicule characters among early sponges. The recovery of diverse and well-preserved organic microfossils from the Forteau shales, reveals that small-scale organic preservation is more widespread than its macroscopic expression in the form of Burgess Shale-type assemblages. “Small organic fossils” may thus emerge as a comparatively continuous source of powerful palaeobiological data across this key period in Earth history.

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Here I focus on the construction of high-resolution nannofossil records, in addition to carbonate preservation, isotope, and other environmental proxy records, for the equatorial Atlantic ODP Sites 662, 926 and 929, and the sub-equatorial Atlantic Site 659. This integrated study demonstrates the detailed character of he nannofossil populations (overall abundance, evolution and morphometric patterns). It also allows an assessment to be made of the stratigraphic and evolutionary importance of nannoplankton events during the mid Pliocene from 3.45-3.95 Ma. The mid Pliocene is demonstrated here to be an interval of subtle reorganisation characterised by the last occurrences of <i>Sphenolithus </i>sp. and <i>Reticulofenestra pseudoumbilicus. </i>The mid Pliocene lies in a wider interval of progressive extinctions of warm water, oligotrophic taxa associated with climatic deterioration from the Late Pliocene to Recent. Nannofossil sediment assemblages are controlled by both the initial production of the nannoplankton in the surface waters and dissolution (in the water column and pre- and post-burial). By the comparison of synchronous nannofossil and non-nannofossil records from Ceara Rise Sites 929 (4397 m water depth) with Site 926 (3598 m water depth), an ecologically dominated assemblage can be clearly distinguished from one that has experienced significant subsequent taphonomic overprinting by dissolution. The latter is differentiated by the number of co-varying relationships, the taxa that form those co-varying relationships, the coupling of dissolution indices with each other and with the co-varying nannofossil abundances, and the loss or reduction of dissolution-susceptible taxa. In non-dissolution influenced populations, two main signals are found to shape the downcore variability in nannofossil assemblages. The main signal is an evolutionary trend. To a lesser extent, the signal is dominated by strong cyclic abundance changes responding to orbitally forced climate changes. Only some of the variance observed in nannofossil abundance patterns can be explained by direct linear climatic forcing. This is to be expected given that in studies of seasonal coccolithophorid assemblages, only part of the variation observed can be explained by simple correlation with abiotic processes.

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