Marine invertebrate fossils from the Permian–Triassic boundary beds of two core sections in the northern Perth Basin, Western Australia

Abstract

Marine macroinvertebrate fossils from two petroleum exploration cores, Apium-1 and Redback-2, are described, and found to contain two separate assemblages. The assemblage from the Apium-1 core was recovered from an ca 5-m-thick interval (2756.35–2751.28 m) in the basal Hovea Member (‘inertinitic interval’) of the Kockatea Shale and includes the following forms: ?Spinomarginifera sp., Cimmeriella sp., ?Etherilosia sp., Elivina sp., Cleiothyridina sp., and Paeckelmanelloidea gen. et. sp. indet. (all brachiopods). The age of this assemblage is interpreted as Changhsingian, as constrained by its association with the palynofloral Dulhuntyispora parvithola Zone. The assemblage from the Redback-2 core was recovered from the ‘sapropelic interval’ of the Hovea Member of the Kockatea Shale between 3806 m and 3786 m and comprises the following forms: Lingulidae gen. et sp. indet. (brachiopod), Claraia perthensis Dickins & McTavish, Crittendenia cf. australasiatica (Krumbeck), ?Paralledon sp. (bivalves), ?Otoceras sp. (ammonoid), Microconchus utahensis Zatoń, Taylor & Vinn (microconchid) and Magniestheria mangaliensis (Jones) (spinicaudatan). Among these, the first local appearances of the lingulid species, ?Otoceras sp. and M. mangaliensis are associated with the palynofloral Protohaploxypinus microcorpus Zone and are interpreted as latest Changhsingian in age. Other occurrences of the Redback-2 fossil assemblage overlap with the palynofloral Kraeuselisporites saeptatus Zone and are considered to be of earliest Triassic (Griesbachian) age.

G.R. Shi [[email protected]] and Sangmin Lee [[email protected]], School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia; Ian Metcalfe [[email protected]], Earth Sciences, Earth Studies Building C02, School of Environmental and Rural Science, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia; Daoliang Chu [[email protected]], State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, PR China; Huiting Wu [[email protected]], College of Geoscience and Surveying Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing, PR China; Tinglu Yang [[email protected]], Faculty of Geosciences, East China University of Technology, Nanchang 330013, PR China; Yuri D. Zakharov [[email protected]], Far East Geological Institute, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladivostok, 690022 Russia.

Key words:

• Permian–Triassic transition
• Permian–Triassic marine invertebrate fossils
• Apium-1
• Redback-2
• northern Perth Basin
• Western Australia

Acknowledgements

IM acknowledges support from an Australian Research Council Grant (No. DP1092881) and thanks Origin Energy for providing core material for study. Rob Willink is thanked for facilitating access to core material and for discussions and provision of other well data. GRS and SL acknowledge support from GeoQuest at the University of Wollongong. HW acknowledges support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 00/800015A302). TY thanks support for his research from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41902005). YDZ acknowledges the support to his research by the Russian Scientific Fund (Project no. 22-27-00003).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03115518.2022.2062783.