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campaign at Five Points in Mahoning Country, Ohio. This locality is now extinct, with the strip-mines reclaimed and the remaining cannel buried in landfill. All 1600-plus specimens have been accessioned at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh.
The high-diversity Five Points fauna - 15 fish genera, 16 amphibian genera plus one fragmentary reptile - comes from the Lower Kittanning Coal of the Allegheny Group, Middle Pennsylvanian (early Westphalian D, H Mazon Creek). The assemblage and its coal- swamp ecology resemble (with differences) those of the classic Westphalian D sites of Linton, Ohio, and Nyrany, Bohemia. Faunal compositions differ but where genera concur, the species are practically identical. Thus many provincial names need to be synonymized. There are many more names than taxa in the Carboniferous!
For sharks we have an abundance of the xenacanth Orthacanthus, including intact dentitions, male claspers, and stomach contents; 223 teeth of Ageleodus; and some fragmentary specimens of the long-snouted ctenacanth Bandringa, much larger than any described. Late-surviving Gyracanthushas left us pectoral and prepectoral spines. Palaeoniscoids are rare: "Elonichthys" peltigerus, Platysomus, and a variety of haplolepids. Lungfishes include the common Sagenodus, Conchopomawith its (heterodox) marginal dentition well displayed, and rare, queer little Palaeopichthys. Unlike Linton the rhipidistians Megalichthysand Rhizodopsis are present. Plus, inevitably, quantities of the coelacanth Rhabdoderma. For us, of course, the tetrapods are the best part, but you fisherpersons don't want to hear about them!

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Werner A. BARTHOLOMÄUSNB Schneidemühler Weg 12, D-30659 HANNOVER, Germany,
Phone: 49 (0)511 649 86 70
c/o e-mail: mudroch@mbox.geowi.uni- hannover.de

Werner is working at the University of Hannover on glacial erratic (geschiebe) boulders from the Devonian of the East Baltic area (Bartholomäus 1999, Solcher 1999). In Germany the "Geschiebekunde" (scientific examination of erratics) has an old tradition. Some past publications did deal with fish remains, mainly of Palaeozoic age. Nowadays the activities are organised by the "Gesellschaft für Geschiebekunde" in Hamburg. Its main periodicals are the "Archiv für Geschiebekunde" and "Geschiebekunde aktuell". Both journals are funded in continuation of the former "Zeitschrift für Geschiebeforschung...", published in Berlin/Leipzig. This journal ends in the year 1948.
At the moment there is little activity on fish remains in Devonian sandstones of Baltic derivation. I am working at the

For fulllisting of all 1998 and early 1999 papers see our web site - We can offer these as a paper, disc or e-mail copy if you have no internet access - please apply to the editor.

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Dr Olga AFANASSIEVA, Paleoichthyology Lab., Paleontological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences 123, Profsoyuznaya St., Moscow, 117647, RUSSIA
Tel: 7 (095)339-74-88, Fax: (095)339-12-66 NEW EMAIL: oafan@paleo.ru

Olga with Tiiu Märss spoke at the Jurmala meeting with a paper on the recognition of osteostracan microremains and showing their increasing use for biostratigraphy.

Paper of note:
Afanassieva, O.B. & Märss, T. 1999. New
data on osteostracan microremains from the
Silurian of Severnaya Zemlya, Russia.
Ichthyolith Issues Special Publication 5, 4-
5.
Paper in press:
Afanassieva, O., and Karatajute-Talimaa, V.
Osteostracans. In: Mathukhin, R.G., and
Menner, V.V. (editors) Stratigraphy of
Silurian and Devonian of Severnaya
Zemlya Archipelago. [In Russian]

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Dr Per Eric AHLBERG, Department of Palaeontology, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, U.K. E-MAIL ADDRESS: pea@nhm.ac.uk

Per hosted a meeting on Early Vertebrates in April 1999 (to be published as a special volume of the Systematics Association). He has been working with Zerina Johanson of the Canowindra Fish Kill site in Australia on the Late Devonian rhizodont fishes. At Jurmala he considered Devonian correlations between Scotland and the Baltic.

Paper of note:
Ahlberg, P.E., Ivanov, A., Luksevics, E. and
Mark-Kurik, E. 1999. Middle and Upper
Devonian correlation of the Baltic area and
Scotland based on fossil fishes. In:
Luksevics, E., Stinkulis, G. & Kalniya, L.
(eds.) The 4th Baltic Stratigraphical
Conference. Problems and Methods of
Modern Regional Stratigraphy. Abstracts.
Riga, 6-8.

*********** Dr. DONALD BAIRD, 4 Ellsworth Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2808, USA

Terrace,

Upper Carboniferous fish fauna of Five Points, Ohio.
Don Baird and Bob Hook (Austin, Texas) report the completion of their 9-year collecting

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