Abstract In a 2007 homicide in Western Australia, small (<0.5 mm diameter) red brick fragments and soil were identified on the victim's clothing (mainly bra), body (mainly hair) and vehicle. A comparative study of the mineralogy and morphology of the red brick fragments with red bricks from the paved area in front of the victim's house was undertaken by traditional laboratory X-ray diffraction (XRD) using low background Si wafer holders and a 0.5 mm focusing monocapillary attachment. Whilst significant similarities were observed between the two datasets, peak overlaps and poor resolution prevented a specific provenance to be determined. Additional analyses using the superior intensity and resolution of synchrotron XRD that was conducted at the Australian Synchrotron quantified the mineralogy of polycrystalline minerals (cristobalite and mullite) in the small brick fragments. These data established that the brick fragments could not be distinguished from the driveway bricks and were clearly shown to be different to a range of other possible sources. The trial was before a judge only and he concluded that the mineralogy data from the small brick fragments on the victim's clothing and the bricks from her front driveway indicated that she was initially attacked in her front yard and not at Kings Park where her body was buried.

Abstract A large collection of vertebrate coprolites from black lacustrine shales in the Late Triassic (Rhaetian–Sinemurian) Kap Stewart Formation, East Greenland is examined with regard to internal and external morphology, prey inclusions, and possible relationships to the contemporary vertebrate fauna. A number of the coprolites were mineralogically examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), showing the primary mineral composition to be apatite, clay minerals, carbonates and, occasionally, quartz in the form of secondary mineral grains. The coprolite assemblage shows multiple sizes and morphotypes of coprolites, and different types of prey inclusions, demonstrating that the coprolite assemblage originates from a variety of different producers. Supplementary material: A description of the size, shape, structure, texture, contents and preservation of the 328 specimens is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.2134335

Abstract The link between the renowned palaeoichthyologist Arthur Smith Woodward and the similarly lauded marine reptile collector Alfred Nicholson Leeds may seem an unlikely one, but they formed a close family friendship during their professional acquaintance. Amongst the many fish specimens described by Smith Woodward from Leeds’ Oxford Clay collection, the large suspension feeder Leedsichthys problematicus was a challenge that he failed to resolve in print. Work is done to resolve the confused storage history of the material, in order to identify and reappraise the bones that comprised the type material, in the process revealing a key misidentification that undoubtedly coloured Smith Woodward’s type description, and his initial understanding and interpretation of the animal.

The almost circular Roter Kamm impact crater, in 1200 Ma granitic gneiss of the Namaqua Metamorphic Complex of the southern Namib Desert, has a diameter of 2.5 km and an age of 4–5 Ma. A variable orientation of the foliation in the rim gneisses is suggestive of large-scale brecciation of the rim. Along some parts of the rim, the average orientation of the foliation in the rim gneisses is tangential, along other parts it is radial, and along still other parts it is random. New analyses of large samples of the rim gneisses demonstrate a large-scale chemical heterogeneity of the target rocks. Black cataclasite veins, although mineralogically identical to their host gneisses, are almost invariably more potassic than the latter. The ejecta apron outside the crater was deposited on the earliest, fossil-bearing, eolian sands of the Pliocene to Holocene Sossus Sand Formation. Subsequent calcretization cemented the apron, but erosion and redeposition of the ejecta have not been significant in the desert environment of the southern Namib. Younger Sossus Formation sands now fill the crater and partly cover the rim and the ejecta apron. Ejecta outside the crater are most abundant in an outward-fanning apron extending from the north-northwest to the west of the crater. Blocks between 20 cm and 1.5 m in size are concentrated in this main apron in concentrically and radially orientated swaths. The longest of the latter extends 5.5 km to the northwest of the crater. Sizes of fragments on the crater rim and mappable features in the rim that can be followed and fan out into the ejecta apron, together with a slight asymmetry of the crater, suggest that the trajectory of the impacting body was northwesterly.

The Hunter Creek Sandstone of the Verdi Basin, Nevada, yielded a succession of superposed continental faunal assemblages ranging in age from the late Clarendonian (late Miocene) through the late Blancan (late Pliocene) in the North American land mammal age framework, or ca. 10.5–2.5 Ma. We describe two new local faunas from the Hunter Creek Sandstone: the East Verdi local fauna, of late-medial to late Clarendonian age, which includes Dinohippus cf. D. leardi , Camelidae, ?Antilocapridae, and Mammutidae or Gomphotheriidae; and the Mogul local fauna, of Hemphillian age, which includes Dinohippus sp., Rhinocerotidae, Camelidae (at least two species), Mammut sp., and possibly Gomphotheriidae. A third unnamed assemblage, of latest Hemphillian or earliest Blancan age, is represented by a small sample of fossils from W.M. Keck Museum locality P-105. The only taxa recovered from this locality are cf. Megatylopus and Gomphotheriidae or Mammutidae. A single late Blancan locality, the Byland locality, yielded Equus idahoensis . The recognition of this faunal succession provides a biostratigraphic framework for the Hunter Creek Sandstone that corroborates and is consistent with the previous chronostratigraphy based on radioisotopic and tephrochronologic dating methods.