We report a new chelonioid turtle on the basis of a nearly complete skull collected in lower Paleocene, shallow marine deposits, equivalent to the offshore Landana Formation, near the town of Landana in Cabinda Province, Angola. Chelonioid material previously reported from this locality is likely referable to this new taxon. The well-preserved skull is missing the left quadrate, squamosal, and prootic, both opisthotics, and the mandible. The skull possesses a rod-like basisphenoid rostrum, which is a synapomorphy of Chelonioidea, but it differs from other chelonioid skulls in that the contact between the parietal and squamosal is absent, and the posterior palatine foramen is present. Phylogenetic analysis recovers the new taxon as a basal chelonioid. The Paleocenetextendash Eocene strata near Landana have produced a wealth of turtle fossils, including the holotype of the pleurodire Taphrosphys congolensis. A turtle humerus collected from the Landana locality differs morphologically from the humeri of chelonioids and Taphrosphys, indicating the presence of a third taxon. Chelonioid fossil material in the Landana assemblage is rare compared to the abundant fragmentary remains of Taphrosphys that are found throughout the stratigraphic section. This disparity in abundance suggests the new chelonioid taxon preferred open marine habitats, whereas Taphrosphys frequented nearshore environments.

We extend some classical statistical inference to the case of a random number of observations with a stabilized distribution: namely, in the normal model, inference for the mean with known and unknown variance and inference for the variance. We describe some useful models for the number of observations obtained by truncation or translation of usual models given by integer-valued random variables: Poisson, binomial, geometric, and negative binomial. We present an efficient random search algorithm for the computation of the quantiles of the relevant statistics, we describe an interval estimation procedure for the extended model, and we propose a parametric bootstrap simulation study to validate the proposed procedure.

The robustness of the test method based on a single 3D off-axis prismatic specimen for the simultaneous identification of the orthotropic stiffness components of clear wood is addressed. In this method, the specimen is consecutively submitted to uniaxial compression tests along its three orthogonal axes. A data reduction based on anisotropic elasticity is applied to extract active material parameters from 3D full-field deformation measurements provided by stereo-correlation over adjacent faces. Two major limitations of this test method, directly affecting the parameter identification, are analysed and discussed: (1) off-axes angle orientation; (2) friction effects. A numerical study pointed out that radial and tangential rotations of about 29° and 9°, respectively, balances out the strain components in the specimen response. Moreover, friction can be reduced by using mass lubricant or soft material in the contact interface, realising transverse shear deformation.