Fossil Decapod Crustaceans

This thematic issue of the BSGF-Earth Sciences Bulletin is linked to the 6th Symposium on Mesozoic and Cenozoic Decapod Crustaceans. This scientific meeting was held on June 2016 at the Paléospace Museum of Villers-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. It was supported by the French Geological Society (SGF), the Center for Research on Palaeobiodiversity and Palaeoenvironments (UMR 7207 CNRS) and the National Museum of Natural History, Paris (MNHN). The organization of a symposium dedicated to the Mesozoic and Cenozoic decapod crustaceans was new for France, but was based on a long standing tradition, which dates back to the pioneer work of Latreille, Desmarest and Milne Edwards. During the meeting, nine sessions were proposed and grouped 25 oral communications and 11 posters. Our esteemed colleague Rodney M. Feldmann (Kent State University) opened the scientific sessions with a talk about the Recent Revolution in Decapod Paleontology and concluded that recent remarkable advances have been the result of an increase in the number of palaeontologists devoted to the study of the decapods. Their efforts, coupled with increasingly sophisticated research promises even more innovations in the future. This special issue groups nine original articles on the main topics discussed during the meeting on the crustaceans: systematics, taxonomy, phylogeny, evolution, palaeoecology, palaeobiology, palaeoenvironment, and palaeobiogeography. For instance, Hyžn y et al. (2017) present a review of the burrowing lobster Axius (Axiidea) in the fossil record with notes on its palaeobiogeography. Regarding the palaeoenvironments, a comparative analysis of the Ypresian crustaceans from the coral-algal environments in north-eastern Italy, and a study on the faunal turnovers in the context of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic evolution of the Basque-Cantabrian Basin (Spain), are proposed by Beschin et al. (2017) and LópezHorgue and Bodego (2017) respectively. The systematic palaeontology groups different scientific papers about erymid