Peculiarly shaped, relatively large (up to 30 cm in diameter) concretions of quartzitic sandstone occur in a single horizon of Upper Albian loose sands in the Cracow Upland, southern Poland. They are characterized by hollow interiors adorned with mass-aggregated moulds of the borings of diverse sponges, polychaetes and bivalves. These moulds represent the siliceous filling of borings in limestone clasts that had been subject to dissolution, leaving a hollow within the concretion that had formed around them. Synsedimentary block-faulting and jointing affected the Jurassic limestone-basement, causing the uplift of a local horst (the Glanow Horst), to within the littoral zone so that it became exposed to abrasion. It is inferred that a hurricane or catastrophic storm surge swept limestone debris fallen from the cliff out to the sandy offshore, where nucleation of soluble silica was presumably favoured by the decay of the soft tissue of live or dead rock-borers. After filling the empty borings and solution of the limestone clasts, the nucleation progressed intensely, finally completed by precipitation of siliceous sinter in the hollow interiors of some of the concretions during subsequent diagenesis and/or epigenesis.

The Karpatian-Badenian (Burdigalian-Langhian, Early-Middle Miocene) transition is a key interval in the evolution of the Paratethys and the proto-Mediterranean Sea. We present here, based on the Wagna section (Styrian Basin, Central Paratethys), a study of a quantitative analysis of the microfossils (foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils) and a statistical treatment of data to reconstruct the palaeoenvironmental condition during this time. During the Karpatian, relatively deep water, cool conditions with a relatively high nutrient input prevailed in the Styrian Basin, as suggested by the high abundance of cool-water foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils. The Badenian was generally warmer, with a lower availability of nutrients, and was characterized by carbonate units and patch reefs and associated microfossil assemblages (e.g., Eponides spp.). Riverine plumes brought fresh water into the Styrian Basins during the Badenian and induced high productivity and the proliferation of species highly tolerant of low salinity such as Ammonia tepida. The passage from calcareous nannofossil Zone NN4 to NN5 is characterized by a reorganization of water masses and the transition from cooler and nutrient-rich to warmer and nutrient-poorer waters. Based on the microfossil abundance trends we interpret the planktonic foraminiferal species Globigerina tarchanensis as preferring cooler nutrient-rich waters and Reticulofenestra minuta as preferring warmer and nutrient-poor waters. The application of cluster analysis based on the Bray-Curtis Similarity and non-metric MultiDimensional Scaling (nMDS) adds important information to that obtained only from microfossil abundance curves, enabling identification of cryptic trends and correlation with sequence stratigraphy. This method may even complement biostratigraphic interpretation and support age attribution in the Paratethyan area, where marker species are missing.

An assemblage of blind phacopid trilobites of the genus Trimerocephalus McCoy, 1849, representing either the species Trimerocephalus mastophthalmus (Reinhard Richter, 1856) or its allies (possibly, a new species), from an Early Famennian (Early Marginifera Zone) marly sequence of the Holy Cross Mountains, Central Poland, is composed of well organized single-file queues. The trilobites in the queues appear almost intact, having been preserved in the position they kept when forming the queues, and are interpreted showing migratory behaviour known in various present-day arthropods, but unreported from the fossil state. This queuing was induced by environmental stress caused by a dramatic drop in sea level, temporarily leading to emersion. The preservation of the queues at omission horizons is thus ascribed to a mass mortality event, caused by subaerial exposure. The trilobites were suffocated and fossilized in a mortal spasm, and finally blanketed by calcareous ooze when inundated at a highstand. The assemblage of trilobite queues represents a unique example of frozen behaviour and a snapshot of the geological past.

The Eastern Sudetic Island was an emerged area in the late Cretaceous shelf-sea of central Europe that delivered coarse siliciclastic material to adjacent basins. The extent of this land area during the Early-to-Middle Turonian has been reconstructed on the basis of a heavy-mineral analysis of the Jerzmanice sandstones from the North Sudetic Basin. The heavy minerals studied predominantly derive from medium to high grade metamorphic rocks, such as granulites and metabasites, calc-silicate rocks, mica schists and gneisses, and from garnet peridotites and pegmatites/granites. The interpretation of various heavy mineral species provides evidence that the major part of the detritus constituting the Jerzmanice sandstones was supplied from a relatively small area of the fore-Sudetic part of the Gory Sowie Massif and its immediate vicinity, approx. 50 km away from the depositional site. Heavy minerals and particularly the chemical characteristics of detrital garnets, cr-spinels and tourmalines, have turned out to be excellent indicators of the provenance of these mature late cretaceous sandstones.

Phosphatized sponges from the Santonian of the Wielkanoc Quarry are represented by 11 species of Hexactinosida and 16 species of Lychniscosida. Their species composition is most similar to the Micraster coranguinum Zone fauna (Middle Coniacian - Middle Santonian) of England. Three preservational groups of sponges are distinguished: ’white’, ’beige’ and ’dark’. They are infilled by phosphatized foraminiferal/foraminiferal-calcisphere wackestone and are contained in the marly calcareous inoceramid packstone. The sponges indicate a calm and relatively deep (> 100 m) life environment. After burial, phosphatization and exhumation, the fossil sponges were redeposited in Upper Santonian strata. The ’white’ and ’beige’ groups were transported laterally over a very short distance or represent lag deposits. The rolled and crushed sponges of the ’dark’ group were exhumed and phosphatized more than once. They could be redeposited (reworked) nearly in the same place and/or transported from some longer distances (but not from outside the Cracow Swell). The phosphatized sponges document the former presence in the area of part of theMiddle Coniacian through Middle Santonian succession, which was removed secondarily by subsequent erosion.

Integrated analysis of trilobite and acritarch assemblages across the traditional Lower-Middle Cambrian boundary in the Holy Cross Mountains (Poland) has documented the development of both groups in this interval. Trilobite assemblages, comprising 31 taxa (13 are revised herein) dominated by the Ellipsocephalidae, change from the protolenoid-dominated in the Lower Cambrian to the kingaspidoid-ornamentaspidoid-dominated in the Middle Cambrian, and correlate well with theAgdzian Stage ofWest Gondwana (Geyer and Landing 2004). Correspondence toWest Gondwana and Avalonia is also evident from the presence of the associated trilobite genera, Palaeolenus, Myopsolenites, Latikingaspis, Kingaspis, Latoucheia and Orodes. The acritarch assemblages, comprising 77 taxa, indicate that their main taxonomic turnover was gradual and preceded the earliest occurrence of Paradoxides spp., as in the Spanish sections. The geological succession studied in the HCMrepresents part of the Cambrian strata that are generally missing in Baltica.