A reappraisal of the Italian record of the Cretaceous pachycormid fish Protosphyraena Leidy, 1857

The genus Protosphyraena is known mainly from partial remains, consisting of isolated blade-like teeth, conical rostra and scythe-like pectoral fins. This paper provides a new insight into partial specimens of the genus Protosphyraena from the Cretaceous of NE Italy, housed in historical collections from local paleontological museums and previously poorly known to the international scientific community. The specimens are referred to the species Protosphyraena ferox, based on the morphology of the pectoral fin. This attribution is consistent with the paleobiogeographic distribution and stratigraphic range of this taxon. The Italian material provides new information about the distribution in time and space of Protosphyraena, which is relatively poorly known despite being an iconic taxon. The Italian remains, although fragmentary, contribute to fill a gap in the central Tethys record of the genus, whose range probably extended worldwide, considering also the genus Australopachycormus and its profound (possibly congeneric) similarities

UPPER CENOMANIAN FISHES FROM THE BONARELLI LEVEL (OAE2) OF NORTHEASTERN ITALY

The Bonarelli Level (BL) is a radiolarian-ichthyolithic, organic-rich marker bed that was deposited close to the Cenomanian/Turonian boundary (CTB) representing the sedimentary expression of the global Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (OAE2). In northeastern Italy this horizon yielded fossil remains documenting a rather diverse ichthyofauna. The assemblage was studied by Sorbini in 1976 based on material from a single locality, Cinto Euganeo. Subsequently, other localities yielding fish remains have been discovered. Our revision also includes fish remains from three new fish-bearing localities, the Carcoselle Quarry, the Valdagno-Schio tunnel and Quero other than those from Bomba Quarry near Cinto Eugeneo. At least 28 taxa were identified, including nine previously not reported from the Bonarelli Level, namely: Scapanorhynchus raphiodon, Cretalamna appendiculata, Archaeolamna kopingensis, ‘Nursallia’ tethysensis, Belonostomus sp., Dixonanogmius dalmatius, ‘Protosphyraena’ stebbingi and the beryciform Hoplopteryx sp. The overall assemblage mostly consists of crossognathiforms, tselfatiiforms and aulopiforms. A comparison of the taxonomic diversity with coeval assemblages evidences a general similarity with nearby western Tethyan fish assemblages and especially with the Jebel Tselfat ichthyofauna, although some of the taxa are exclusively shared with the assemblages of the boreal realm (English Chalk, Westphalia and Saxony). However, additional information would be necessary to more properly define the main global ichthyogeographic patterns during the Cenomanian

DarkCache: Energy-performance Optimization of Tiled Multi-cores by Adaptively Power Gating LLC Banks

The Last Level Cache (LLC) is a key element to improve application performance in multi-cores. To handle the worst case, the main design trend employs tiled architectures with a large LLC organized in banks, which goes underutilized in several realistic scenarios. Our proposal, named DarkCache, aims at properly powering off such unused banks to optimize the Energy-Delay Product (EDP) through an adaptive cache reconfiguration, thus aggressively reducing the leakage energy. The implemented solution is general and it can recognize and skip the activation of the DarkCache policy for the few strong memory intensive applications that actually require the use of the entire LLC. The validation has been carried out on 16- and 64-core architectures also accounting for two state-of-the-art methodologies. Compared to the baseline solution, DarkCache exhibits a performance overhead within 2% and an average EDP improvement of 32.58% and 36.41% considering 16 and 64 cores, respectively. Moreover, DarkCache shows an average EDP gain between 16.15% (16 cores) and 21.05% (64 cores) compared to the best state-of-the-art we evaluated, and it confirms a good scalability since the gain improves with the size of the architecture

Nuovi dati stratigrafici sull’ambra di Castelvecchio di Prignano (MO)

L’ambra dell’Appennino settentrionale è nota nel Bolognese fin dal XVII secolo (Masini, 1650; Boccone, 1684). La prima segnalazione dal Modenese risale a Strobel (1886), che parla di ambra da “Sassuolo nella provincia di Modena”; l’età di tale ambra rimane però indefinita. Skalski & Veggiani (1990), nella loro rassegna di ambre della Sicilia e dell’Appennino settentrionale, attribuiscono l’ambra del Bolognese (Scanello vicino a Loiano, provincia di Bologna) alla Formazione di Ranzano (o Loiano? L’equivalenza tra le due formazioni dichiarata dagli autori non è valida), assegnandole all’Oligocene inferiore. L’ambra del Modenese, più precisamente localizzata da Skalski & Veggiani (1990) nelle “Castelvecchio sandstones” (sic), vicino a Prignano (MO), viene dagli stessi autori attribuita alla Formazione di Ranzano e quindi datata anch’essa all’Oligocene inferiore. Angelini & Bellintani (2005), nella loro rassegna sulle ambre di provenienza archeologica dell’Italia settentrionale, hanno analizzato con metodi spettroscopici ambre di Scanello Bolognese (BO) e di Castelvecchio di Prignano (MO), evidenziando una marcata differenza tra i campioni provenienti dal Bolognese e dal Modenese. Inoltre, l’attribuzione dell’ambra di Castelvecchio all’Oligocene non è sostenuta da alcun dato diretto, se si esclude una possibile somiglianza litologica tra gli strati campionati e quelli della Formazione di Ranzano. In sintesi, l’attribuzione di un’età oligocenica all’ambra proveniente da Castelvecchio di Prignano risulta quantomeno dubbia. Un affioramento contenente ambra da questa località del Modenese è stato recentemente localizzato con precisione, misurato e campionato. L’esposizione comprende circa 5 m di successione, costituita da arenarie più o meno calcaree intercalate a livelli siltitici e argillosi variamente bioturbati. All’interno dei livelli arenitici (di solito nella loro parte superiore) si trovano livelli ricchi di frustoli vegetali, contenenti ambra e pezzi di carbone. L’ambra si presenta in frammenti e gocce, generalmente di colore rosso molto scuro, di dimensioni che vanno da 0,5 cm fino a oltre 6-7 cm. Al momento non sono state osservate inclusioni animali, soltanto alcuni minuscoli frammenti carboniosi che rendono scuro il colore della resina fossile. Sull’ambra è stata effettuata l’analisi agli infrarossi a trasformata di Fourier (FTIR). Per chiarire il contesto stratigrafico della resina fossile di Castelvecchio, sono stati raccolti campioni per lo studio del plancton calcareo, che ha consentito di attribuire i livelli fossiliferi alla parte superiore del Maastrichtiano. Questo dato diretto ha permesso, per la prima volta, di far risalire un’ambra dell’Appennino settentrionale al Cretaceo, diversamente da quanto finora riportato in letteratura. Bibliografia: Angelini I. & Bellintani P. (2005). Archaeological ambers from Northern Italy: an FTIR-DRIFT study of provenance by comparison with the geological amber database. Archaeometry, 47: 441-454. Boccone P. (1684). Osservazioni naturali ove si contengono Materie Medico-Fisiche, e di Botanica, Produzioni Naturali, Fosfori diversi, Fuochi sotterranei d’Italia, et altre curiosità. Manolessi Stamp., Bologna, p. 156-157. Masini A. (1650). Bologna perlustrata. Zenero, Bologna, p. 180. Skalski A.W. & Veggiani A. (1990). Fossil Resin in Sicily and the Northern Apennines: Geology and Organic content. Prace Muzeum Ziemi, 41: 37-49. Strobel P. (1886). L’ambra padana. Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana, 12: 42-49

Morphology and paleobiology of the Late Cretaceous large-sized shark Cretodus crassidens (Dixon, 1850) (Neoselachii; Lamniformes)

The definition of the Cretaceous shark genus Cretodus Sokolov, 1965 is primarily based on isolated teeth. This genus includes five species. Among these, Cretodus houghtonorum Shimada and Everhart, 2019 is the only species based on a partially preserved skeleton. Here, the taxonomic attribution of a virtually complete skeleton of Cretodus from the Turonian of northeastern Italy is discussed, together with a few specimens from the Turonian of England. One of the latter is investigated through micropaleontological analysis to determine its stratigraphic position. The material is referred to Cretodus crassidens (Dixon, 1850), the diagnosis of which is emended herein. The dentition is tentatively reconstructed, exhibiting strong similarities with congeneric species, although it differs in having strong vertical folds on the main cusp labial face, a mesiodistally broad tooth aspect, weak and well-spaced 'costulae' at crown base, and a different dental formula in the number of parasymphyseal and lateral rows. Some tooth malformations are interpreted as feeding-related or senile characters. The Italian specimen suggests that Cretodus crassidens had a wide and laterally expanded mouth and head, a stout body, and attained a gigantic size. Cretodus crassidens was a moderate-speed swimming shark ecologically like the extant tiger shark Galeocerdo cuvier (Péron and Lesueur in Lesueur, 1822). The age estimate from vertebral-band counting suggests that the Italian individual was at least 23 years old and the growth model indicates a longevity of 64 years and a maximum attainable total length of 9-11 m. Cretodus crassidens occurs both in Boreal and Tethyan domains, implying a broad paleobiogeographic distribution and a preference toward offshore settings

The Bartonian-Priabonian transition at the Varignano Section (Trento Province, Northern Italy): correlation between shallow benthic and calcareous plankton zones

Correlation between biotic events from shallow-water environments and deep-water setting is one of the main challenges in biostratigraphy. The Bartonian/Priabonian transition has attracted great attention by biostratigraphers in the last decade in searching for a boundary stratotype section. The current candidate for the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) of the base of Priabonian is the Alano di Piave section (Agnini et al. 2011, 2014). Unfortunately, at Alano coarse bioclastic levels containing larger foraminifera are limited to an interval well below any of the biotic and magnetostratigraphic criteria proposed to correlate the base of the Priabonian, (Agnini et al. 2011, 2014). The Varignano section (Trentino region, northern Italy), cropping out ca. 80 km west of the Alano section, provides a unique opportunity for attaining a direct correlation between Shallow Benthic Zones (SBZ; Serra-Kiel et al., 1998) and standard calcareous plankton zones at the Bartonian–Priabonian transition because it preserves several coarse bioclastic levels rich in larger foraminifera. These levels are quite evenly distributed from base to top, and are intercalated with basinal marls, crystal tuff layers, and sapropels. Bioclastic beds derive from the nearby Lessini Shelf, the Paleogene paleogeographic unit rising east of the Lombardian Basin, where the Varignano section was deposited. The study section spans the planktic foraminiferal Zones E12 to lower E14 of Wade et al. (2011), the calcareous nannoplankton Zones MNP16Bc to MNP18 of Fornaciari et al. (2010) and the Chron 18n to 17n.2n. All primary and secondary calcareous plankton bioevents are recorded at Varignano in the same order and stratigraphic position as in Alano. Our results demonstrate that the Varignano section spans the upper part of SBZ 17 and the lower part of SBZ 18, with the boundary marked by the first occurrence of the genus Pellatispira. It occurs ca. 2 m below the extinction of morozovellids and large acarininids, one of the criteria proposed to correlate the base of the Priabonian. This is in contrast with the base Priabonian corresponding to the base of SBZ 19 as traditionally agreed by shallow-water biostratigraphers. Furthermore, biomagnetostratigraphic data allow us to correlate a prominent crystal-tuff layer outcropping at Varignano with the Tiziano bed, the tuff layer which base has been proposed to designate the GSSP of Priabonian in the Alano section (Agnini et al. 2011, 2014). The direct correlation of SBZ, calcareous nannofossil zones and planktonic foraminiferal zones together with magnetostratigraphy gives the chance to verify the current biostratigraphic correlation schemes. We here reaffirm the substantial validity of the calcareous plankton correlation, whereas the correlations with SBZ need to be revised. References Agnini, C., Fornaciari, E., Giusberti, L., Grandesso, P., Lanci, L., Luciani, V., et al. (2011). Integrated biomagnetostratigraphy of the Alano section (NE Italy): A proposal for defining the middle-late Eocene boundary. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 123(5–6), 841–872. Agnini, C., Backman, J., Fornaciari, E., Galeotti, S., Giusberti, L., Grandesso, P., Lanci, L., Monechi, S., Muttoni, G., Pälike, H., Pampaloni, M.L., Pignatti, J., Premoli Silva, I., Raffi, I., Rio, D., Rook, L. & Stefani, C. (2014). The Alano Section: The Candidate GSSP for the Priabonian Stage. In: Rocha, R., Pais, J., Kullberg, J.C. and Finney, S. (Eds.) STRATI 2013. Springer Geology. Springer International Publishing, 55-59. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-04364-7_11 Fornaciari, E., Agnini, C., Catanzariti, R., Rio, D., Bolla, E. M., & Valvasoni, E. (2010). Mid latitude calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy and biochronology across the middle to late Eocene transition. Stratigraphy, 7, 229–264. Serra-Kiel, J., Hottinger, L., Caus, E., Drobne, K., Ferràndez, C., Jauhri, A. K., et al. (1998). Larger foraminiferal biostratigraphy of the Tethyan Paleocene and Eocene. Bulletin de la Société géologique de France, 169(2), 281–299. Wade, B. S., Pearson, P. N., Berggren, W. A., & Pälike, H. (2011). Review and revision of Cenozoic tropical planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy and calibration to the geomagnetic polarity and astronomical time scale. Earth-Science Reviews, 104, 111–142

A data-driven analysis of the current debate on the linkages between performance and strategy studies

This paper focuses on how the relations between performance management and measurement (PMM) and strategy are considered by scholars. These relations are crucial in building a comprehensive body of knowledge of a complex and multifaceted phenomenon which attracts scholars pertaining to different management disciplines. The results obtained by adopting quantitative methodologies (descriptive statistics and text-mining analysis) on a sample of articles recently published in the most influential international 'business, and management accounting' journals, contribute to extant literature by providing evidence that several connections exist between key-concepts which are usually considered an exclusive heritage of single management disciplines, such as strategy, organisation, management control, and so forth. For that reason, an integration of competences and methodologies is needed to support further research in the field. We also find evidence suggesting that the organisational perspective should be particularly considered when investigating the relations between strategy, management control systems and PMM

EVIDENCE OF OPPORTUNISTIC FEEDING BETWEEN ICHTHYOSAURS AND THE OLDEST OCCURRENCE OF THE HEXANCHID SHARK NOTIDANODON FROM THE UPPER JURASSIC OF NORTHERN ITALY

In 2016, two fossil marine reptiles were re-discovered in the collections of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona. Originally recovered near Asiago, Vicenza province (northern Italy) from an outcrop of the Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Fm. (Middle-Upper Jurassic), they were never described. Morphological analysis carried out under UV-light allowed enhancing contrast with the surrounding matrix and better identifying some anatomical details. Both specimens consist of partially articulated postcranial elements from two distinct ichthyosaurs, including vertebrae, ribs, and some fragmentary elements of the appendicular skeleton. The first specimen V7101 is here tentatively assigned to Ophthalmosauridae based on a combination of features shared with other taxa in this family, such as the regionalization of the vertebral column. Taphonomical analysis suggests a long exposure of the carcass on the sea floor before burial; two teeth of the hexanchiform shark Notidanodon found near the ribcage could indicate scavenging. An ichthyosaur tooth most probably not belonging to the same specimen was found stuck on a rib and can also be attributed to scavenging – the first ever record of this interaction between two ichthyosaurs. The second specimen V7102 is represented by a poorly preserved partial vertebral column and is here referred to Ichthyosauria indet. due to the absence of taxonomically significant characters. Calcareous nannofossil data and microfacies analyses allow us to assign both specimens to the basal Kimmeridgian. This makes the two Notidanodon teeth associated with V7101 the oldest recorded occurrence of this genus