New Dendrobranchiata fossil preserved in the Brazilian Cretaceous (Aptian/Albian) from the Araripe Basin, Piauí State.

The fossil shrimp Somalis piauiensis n. gen. n.

New data on Beurlenia araripensis Martins-Neto & Mezzalira, 1991, a lacustrine shrimp from Crato Formation, and its morphological variations based on the shape and the number of rostral spines.

Fossil freshwater carideans are very rare worldwide. Here, we present new taxonomic remarks about Beurlenia araripensis from the Early Cretaceous laminated limestones of the Crato Formation, Araripe Basin, northeastern Brazil. We analyzed five fossil samples, testing the morphological variations such as, rostrum with 5 to 14 supra-rostral spines and 2 to 3 sub-rostral spines, which appears as serrate for Caridea.

Physicochemical investigation of shrimp fossils from the Romualdo and Ipubi formations (Araripe Basin).

The Ipubi and Romualdo Formations are Cretaceous units of the Araripe Basin (Santana Group). The first and most ancient was deposited in a lake environment, and some fossils were preserved in shales deposited under blackish conditions. The second was deposited in a marine environment, preserving a rich paleontological content in calcareous concretions.

Large-field electron imaging and X-ray elemental mapping unveil the morphology, structure, and fractal features of a Cretaceous fossil at the centimeter scale.

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).