“…Although all the fossil occurrences of whale barnacles published so far are reasonably referable to the Pliocene or Quaternary (COLLARETA et al, 2016a, and previous references therein), some unpublished coronulid specimens from Taiwan may be older (i.e., late Miocene; John BUCKERIDGE, personal communication, 2018). Based on the remarkable host preferences of extant whale barnacle species, and considering that the detachment of coronulid shells from their host's skin has been observed along migration routes and especially in cetacean breeding/calving grounds (BIA- NUCCI et al, 2006b, and references therein), the fossil remains of whale barnacles have recently been interpreted as markers of ancient mysticete distributional and migration patterns (BIANUCCI et al, 2006a(BIANUCCI et al, , 2006bÁLVAREZ-FERNÁNDEZ et al, 2014;BOSSELAERS & COLLARETA, 2016;COLLARETA et al, 2016bCOLLARETA et al, , 2017BOSSELAERS et al, 2017). From this perspective, whale barnacle remains cease to be exclusively regarded as body fossils, assuming instead an additional role -i.e., providing indirect evidence for the passage of their cetacean hosts -that makes them conceptually similar to trace fossils.…”