Solenochilus Springeri (White & St. John, 1868) from the Pennsylvanian of Southern Iowa

The unique Pennsylvanian nautilid Solenochilus springeri is described with reference to material from the lower Cherokee Group (Atokan or Desmoinesian) of Marion County, Iowa, and the Bloyd Formation (Morrowan) of northwestern Arkansas. The species was based originally on a specimen, now lost, from Adair County, Iowa; a neotype is selected from the Marion County collections. The detailed morphology of the pair of dorsolateral spines which characterize mature Solenochilus is described for the first time. These spines, whose length approximates the width of the mature body chamber, are hollow throughout. Each spine originated as a lateral expansion of a prominent dorsolateral ridge located on the umbilical shoulder

Devonian Ammonoid Manticoceras From Iowa

Recovery of rare, well-preserved representatives of Manticoceras from Upper Devonian (Frasnian) strata of north and east-central Iowa allows clarification of the poorly understood species Manticoceras regulare Fenton & Fenton, and marks the first recorded North American occurrence of Manticoceras lindneri Glenister. The faunal horizons correlate with the upper Manticoceas cordatum (1-y) ammonoid zone and the Palmatolepis gigas conodont zone. M. regulare can be recognized by its narrowly discoidal conch, relatively broad sutural elements, and mature conch diameter of approximately 11 cm. Occurrences of M. regulare have been restricted to the Amana Beds of the Independence Shale and Cerro Gordo Member of the Lime Creek Formation. The larger M. lindneri (mature diameter of approximately 19 cm) possesses a moderately wide conch and narrow sutural elements. All known Iowa representatives are from the Owen Member of the Lime Creek Formation in the north-central portion of the state. The only other known occurrence of M. lindneri is from the lower Virgin Hills Formation, Fitzroy Basin, Western Australia. Recently proposed Devonian paleogeographic reconstructions suggest that such a wide distribution may be attributed to the dispersal effects of warm, equatorial currents

Stenolobulites n. gen., Early Permian ancestor of predominantly Late Permian Paragastrioceratid subfamily Pseudogastrioceratinae

20 p., 10 fig.http://paleo.ku.edu/contributions.htm

Nomad rover field experiment, Atacama desert, Chile 2. Identification of paleolife evidence using a robotic vehicle: Lessons and recommendations for a Mars sample return mission

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from "http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com".During the Nomad Rover Field Experiment in the Atacama Desert (Chile), a potential fossil was identified in a boulder by the science team remotely located at NASA Ames Research Center, California. The science team requested the collecting of the boulder that was returned for laboratory analysis. This analysis confirmed the evidence of paleolife. As the first fossil identified and sampled by a remotely located science team using a rover, we use the case of sample I-250697 to describe the process, both in the field and later in the laboratory during the rock analysis, which led to the identification, characterization, and confirmation of the evidence of paleolife evidence in I-250697. We point out the lessons that this case provides for future Mars sample return missions

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio