Background: Human communities consistently develop a detailed knowledge of the therapeutical and medicinal properties of the local flora and fauna, and these folk remedies often substitute medicines produced by the pharmaceutical industry. Animals (and their derived products) are essential ingredients in the preparation of many traditional remedies. The present work prepared an inventory of the animals sold in public markets in the cities of Crato and Juazeiro do Norte, Ceará State, Brazil.

A very large pterosaur (MN 6594-V) from the Romualdo Formation (Aptian/Albian), Santana Group, Araripe Basin, is described. The specimen is referred to Tropeognathus cf. T. mesembrinus mainly due to the presence of a low and blunt frontoparietal crest, the comparatively low number of teeth and the inclined dorsal part of the occipital region. Two distinct wingspan measurements for pterosaurs are introduced: the maximized wingspan (maxws), which essentially consists of doubling the addition of all wing elements and the length of the scapula or the coracoid (the smaller of the two), and the normal wingspan (nws), which applies a reducing factor (rfc) to the maximized wingspan to account for the natural flexures of the wing. The rfc suggested for pteranodontoids is 5%. In the case of MN 6594-V, the maxws and nws are 8.70 m and 8.26 m, respectively, making it the largest pterosaur recovered from Gondwana so far. The distal end of a larger humerus (MCT 1838-R) and a partial wing (MPSC R 1395) are also described showing that large to giant flying reptiles formed a significant part of the pterosaur fauna from the Romualdo Formation. Lastly, some comments on the nomenclatural stability of the Santana deposits are presented.

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A third specimen of Susisuchus anatoceps is described. The new material comprises postcranial remains, including an almost complete sequence of cervical vertebrae, prothoracic and posterior dorsal vertebrae, and osteoderms from dorsal and ventral shield, scapula, coracoid and the forelimb. The new specimen (MPSC‐R1136) was recovered from the Crato Formation (Lower Cretaceous) of the Santana Group, near Nova Olinda municipality, Ceará State, Brazil. Some cervical vertebrae show slightly procoelous centra and at least one of these vertebrae is platycoelic, a feature reported for the first time in Susisuchus. Nevertheless, dorsals have amphicoelic centra. The sagittal segmented dorsal shield comprises two paravertebral rows of square osteoderms and two accessory rows of ellipsoidal osteoderms on each side of the trunk. Three diagnostic characters are present in the new Susisuchus specimen: the proximal and distal articulations of the ulna have about the same width and are thicker with respect to the shaft; the scapular blade has posterior concave and anterior straight margins; and the ungual phalanges are present only on first and second digits of the manus. A phylogenetic analysis of Susisuchus anatoceps based on new characters of MPSC‐R1136 in addition to the holotype, and employing a previous data set of Jouve, placed this taxon as a basal member of the advanced neosuchian clade. © 2011 The Linnean Society of London, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2011, 163, S273–S288.

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The fossil shrimp Araripenaeus timidus n. gen. n. sp. is the first fossil Penaeoidea from Brazil. Here, we describe, illustrate and compare it with Paleomattea deliciosa, a fossil Sergestoidea (Dendrobranchiata) previously described from the same region. The material of the early Cretaceous (Albian) was collected in the town of Jardim, south of the state of Ceará, in the superior septarian concretion level of the Romualdo Formation. Additionally, a second specimen of Kellnerius jamacaruensis was found in the same site of the Araripe Basin.

We used here a scanning electron microscopy approach that detected backscattered electrons (BSEs) and X-rays (from ionization processes) along a large-field (LF) scan, applied on a Cretaceous fossil of a shrimp (area ∼280 mm(2)) from the Araripe Sedimentary Basin. High-definition LF images from BSEs and X-rays were essentially generated by assembling thousands of magnified images that covered the whole area of the fossil, thus unveiling morphological and compositional aspects at length scales from micrometers to centimeters. Morphological features of the shrimp such as pleopods, pereopods, and antennae located at near-surface layers (undetected by photography techniques) were unveiled in detail by LF BSE images and in calcium and phosphorus elemental maps (mineralized as hydroxyapatite). LF elemental maps for zinc and sulfur indicated a rare fossilization event observed for the first time in fossils from the Araripe Sedimentary Basin: the mineralization of zinc sulfide interfacing to hydroxyapatite in the fossil. Finally, a dimensional analysis of the phosphorus map led to an important finding: the existence of a fractal characteristic (D = 1.63) for the hydroxyapatite-matrix interface, a result of physical-geological events occurring with spatial scale invariance on the specimen, over millions of years.

Oxygen isotope compositions of bone phosphate (δO) were measured in broiler chickens reared in 21 farms worldwide characterized by contrasted latitudes and local climates. These sedentary birds were raised during an approximately 3 to 4-month period, and local precipitation was the ultimate source of their drinking water. This sampling strategy allowed the relationship to be determined between the bone phosphate δO values (from 9.8 to 22.5‰ V-SMOW) and the local rainfall δO values estimated from nearby IAEA/WMO stations (from -16.0 to -1.0‰ V-SMOW). Linear least square fitting of data provided the following isotopic fractionation equation: δO = 1.119 (±0.040) δO - 24.222 (±0.644); R = 0.98. The δO-δO couples of five extant mallard ducks, a common buzzard, a European herring gull, a common ostrich, and a greater rhea fall within the predicted range of the equation, indicating that the relationship established for extant chickens can also be applied to birds of various ecologies and body masses. Applied to published oxygen isotope compositions of Miocene and Pliocene penguins from Peru, this new equation computes estimates of local seawater similar to those previously calculated. Applied to the basal bird Confuciusornis from the Early Cretaceous of Northeastern China, our equation gives a slightly higher δO value compared to the previously estimated one, possibly as a result of lower body temperature. These data indicate that caution should be exercised when the relationship estimated for modern birds is applied to their basal counterparts that likely had a metabolism intermediate between that of their theropod dinosaur ancestors and that of advanced ornithurines.