To reveal the community structuring mechanism of the pebble interstitial macrofauna, we examined the community structure and its relationship with abiotic environmental factors on a pebble beach in Honshu, central Japan (northwest Pacific). Throughout the year-round survey, we found 66 species from 18 classes in 9 phyla, most of which were either endemic or undescribed species. This is a noticeably higher species diversity compared to the common theory (quite low biodiversity) for pebble beaches and also indicates independence from other environments. Moreover, the communities were divided into five groups through clustering, which were significantly explained by sediment particle size and tidal level using RDA (Redundancy Analysis). However, their interpretabilities were moderate, suggesting that the community structure was moderately controlled by environmental factors. This could be owing to the optimization of the benefit of interspecific ecological niche isolation and the cost of recovering from the disturbance. Consequently, the present study reveals the presence of diverse and unique macrobenthic communities that inhabit the pebble beach environment in Japan and are controlled by the abiotic environmental characteristics of microhabitats.

The almost complete skeleton of a fossil dreamer, identified as Oneirodes sp., is described from the middle–upper Miocene Kurasi Formation of southern Sakhalin Island, Russia. This is the second fossil skeletal record of oneirodid anglerfishes following those described from the Puente Formation of California, USA. The new specimen possesses morphological features very similar to those of the recent and fossil members of its genus, and cannot be separated from them at the species level. This finding confirms the idea of the high level of speciation of this fish family prior to the middle–late Miocene and demonstrates the wide geographic distribution of the genus Oneirodes already at this time.

Is the Middle Palaeolithic an appropriate concept in eastern Asia? The issuehas been debated for China in two recent papers in Antiquity (Yee 2012; Li 2014), whichin turn responded to an earlier argument set out by Gao and Norton (2002). But does the Korean recordoffer a different perspective? Here, the authors argue that Koreanarchaeology, as with the Chinese record, provides no support for a distinctMiddle Palaeolithic. Rather than seeking to validate an inappropriatechronological framework derived from European Palaeolithic research,emphasis should instead be placed on developing a regionally specific modelof prehistory for eastern Asia. They conclude, akin to Gao and Norton (2002), that the East AsianPalaeolithic should be divided into two major cultural periods: Early andLate.