Abstract: A review of Permian fusuline biostratigraphy is made in this paper in order to improve the correlation of Permian strata globally. Permian fusuline biostratigraphy in the Tethyan and Panthalassan regions can be correlated roughly because the fusulines had good faunal communications between these two regions. However, fusuline faunas from the North American Craton region were devoid of almost all neoschwagerinids and dominated exclusively by schwagerinids during the Guadalupian (Middle Permian) because of the blockage caused by the vast Pangaea supercontinent. This renders the correlation of Middle Permian biostratigraphy and chronostratigraphy between the Tethyan region and North American region challenging. Significant evolutionary key points in fusulines include the first occurrence of Pseudoschwagerina or Sphaeroschwagerina during the earliest Permian, first occurrence of Pamirina and Misellina during the Yakhtashian and Bolorian, and the extinction of all schwagerinids and neoschwagerinids by the end of the Midian.

Abstract The Carboniferous and Permian systems are important components of the basement rocks in Thailand and crop out widely. The exceptions are the Khorat Plateau, where they occur in the subsurface but are concealed beneath a thick Mesozoic cover, and in the Chao Phraya Central Plain where they are largely covered by Quaternary sediments but crop out in scattered monadnocks (Fig 5.1 ). Most Carboniferous and Permian rocks are of shallow-marine facies although siliceous sediments of ancient ocean-bottom origin are also known in places. Continental deposits are quite rare. The Carboniferous System is dominated by siliciclastic rocks except in northernmost Thailand around the Chiang Mai-Mae Hong Son area where there are large carbonate bodies. In contrast, carbonates are the dominant lithology in the Permian System, forming characteristic karst topography in the tropical humid climate. It has been quarried in some areas, such as Saraburi and Ratchaburi, for flagstones and cement production. In the 1970s and 1980s the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR), Thailand, published a series of 1:250 000 scale geological maps covering the whole of Thailand. That stratigraphic information laid the groundwork for a number of papers on the Carboniferous and Permian systems of this country ( Bunopas 1981 , 1983 , 1992 , 1994 ; DMR 2001 , 2007 ; Raksaskulwong 2002 ; Assavapatchara et al. 2006 ). In parallel with those stratigraphical works, more palaeontological aspects of Carboniferous and Permian strata were summarized ( Toriyama et al. 1975 ; Ingavat

Abstract: Establishing a Permian brachiopod biochronological scheme for global correlation is difficult because of strong provincialism during the Permian. In this paper, a brief overview of brachiopod successions in five major palaeobiogeographical realms/zones is provided. For Gondwanaland and peri-Gondwanan regions including Cimmerian blocks, Bandoproductus and Punctocyrtella (or Cyrtella ) are characteristic of the lower Cisuralian, as is Cimmeriella for the middle Cisuralian. As the Cimmerian blocks continued drifting north during the late Kungurian, accompanied by climate amelioration, contemporaneous brachiopods inhabiting these blocks showed a distinct shift from cold-water to mixed or warm-water affinities. However, coeval brachiopods in the Northern Transitional Zone (NTZ) are characterized by warm-water faunas and are associated with fusulinids in the lower Cisuralian. The Guadalupian brachiopods of the NTZ were clearly mixed between the Boreal and palaeoequatorial affinities. The end-Guadalupian is marked by the disappearance of a few characteristic genera, such as Vediproductus , Neoplicatifera and Urushtenoidea , in the Palaeotethyan region. The onset of the end-Permian mass extinction in the latest Changhsingian is clearly exhibited by the occurrence of the dwarfed and thin-shelled brachiopods commonly containing Paracrurithyris .