ИСТИНА

The genus Eucytherura was established by G.W. Müller (1894, p.305) on four recent species from the Gulf of Naples. Subsequently, Alexander (1936, p.692) designated Eucytherura complexa (Brady, 1867) as type species. In 1949, Weingeist undertook a review and provided a detailed description of the genus. Ayress et al. (1995), in their study of Cenozoic deep-sea Cytheruridae from the SW Pacific and Indian oceans, provided an emended diagnosis of the genus, while Whatley and Boomer (2000) united many Mesozoic genera into Eucytherura. As a result, the genus has become a combination of several morphogroups of uncertain affinities, which has led to difficulties in using fossil, particularly Mesozoic, Eucytherura for palaeoecological and sometimes stratigraphical research. Our Jurassic and Cretaceous material suggests that the generic characteristics of Eucytherura should be revised while the scope of Jurassic and Cretaceous Eucytherura, should exclude taxa such as Rutlandella Bate and Coleman, 1975 and Wellandia Bate and Coleman, 1975. We also discuss the generic assignment of several species.