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Naticid taxonomy is in a state of flux owing to non-descript shell morphology and frequent convergence. Inadequate preservation of naticid body fossils has further complicated the matter in determining the true affinity and the exact time of origin of the clade. As a result, a plethora of classificatory schemes of naticid phylogeny and times of origin has been proposed. In many previous studies, true naticid affinities of fossils have been sought based on single or a few morphological characters, which are susceptible to poor preservation. In the present paper, we have attempted a holistic reappraisal of naticid taxonomy based on an extensive database of shell morphological characters and identified many distinct family- and subfamily-specific characters that survived fossilization. This approach has enabled us to identify three new naticid species from the Late Jurassic horizons of Kutch, India, thus extending back the time of origin of the family Naticidae by 30 Ma.Analysis of character matrix data reveals that the present species—Gyrodes mahalanobisi new species, Euspira jhuraensis new species, and Euspira lakhaparensis new species—belong to two subfamilies, Gyrodinae and Polinicinae. The occurrence of typical naticid drill holes on various coeval gastropod and bivalve taxa along with these body fossils provides strong supporting evidence for the naticid affinity of these forms.UUID http://zoobank.org/94188d64-075b-4bd0-8303-1ce9a0d86eb0

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Turritellid gastropods are important components of many Cretaceous–Recent fossil marine faunas worldwide. Their shell is morphologically simple, making homoplasy widespread and phylogenetic analysis difficult, but fossil and living species can be recognized based on shell characters. For many decades, it has been the consensus that the oldest definite representatives of Turritellidae are from the Lower Cretaceous, and that pre-Cretaceous forms are homeomorphs. Some morphological characters of the present turritelline species resemble those of mathildoids, but many diagnostic characters clearly separate these two groups. We here describe and/or redescribe—based on examination of more than 2600 near complete specimens—four species from the Upper Jurassic Dhosa Oolite Member of the Chari Formation in Kutch, western India, and demonstrate that they are members of Turritellidae, subfamily Turritellinae, on the basis of diagnostic characters including apical sculptural ontogeny (obtained from SEM study), spiral sculpture, and growth line patterns. The four species are in order of abundance, Turritella jadavpuriensis Mitra and Ghosh, 1979; Turritella amitava new species; Turritella jhuraensis Mitra and Ghosh, 1979, and Turritella dhosaensis new species. The turritelline assemblages occur only on the northeastern flank of the Jhura dome (23°24’47.57”N, 69°36’09.26”E). Age of the Dhosa Oolite has recently been confirmed based on multiple ammonite species. All these points indicate that these fossils are the oldest record of the family Turritellidae—by almost 30 million years—in the world.

Building construction is a highly resource intensive process, concerning use of materials, land, energy and water. Since buildings are required to fulfil our primary need for shelter, consumption of these resources is simply unavoidable. However, with shrinking stock of natural resources and degrading eco-system services, the consumption process has to be wise, judicious and non-wasteful. Search for alternative and recycled materials, multiple floor spaces and use of renewable energy are some of the human responses against the perceived threat of materials, land and energy constraints respectively. Water resource management in building construction and operation, however, has still a long way to go, especially because the amount of water used per unit area of construction largely remains undocumented. There has been some pioneering research on embodied water measurement of several non-residential buildings in Australia. In this backdrop, the present paper seeks to understand and assess the quantity of fresh water used in contemporary urban multi-storeyed residential buildings and reports a study conducted for a real-life project in Calcutta (now, Kolkata), India. Since the use of construction water directly varies with the type of construction, a steel and glass building will have its embodied water-footprint mainly on account of that of its materials while on-site water use plays a major role in case of a cast-in-situ reinforced cement concrete and brick building. Thus, water efficiency at the production stage is required in the first case while the second category demands concerns and actions at the consumption stage. This paper examines some of the issues related to the subject like water demand at material production as well as construction stage and the resultant embodied water of typical urban constructions in India, which was found to be in the range of about 27 Kilolitres/Sq m of total built-up area.

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