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This first palynological study of the Permian-Triassic succession in the Guryul Ravine, Kashmir, India, reveals impoverished latest Permian spore-pollen assemblages in the uppermost Zewan Formation, a rich palynoassemblage from the basal Khunamuh Formation characteristic of the Permian-Triassic transition zone and depleted Triassic assemblages from higher in the Khunamuh Formation. The collective assemblages can be broadly correlated to the Densipollenites magnicorpus and Klausipollenites decipiens palynozones of peninsular India and to palynofloras spanning the Permian-Triassic boundary elsewhere in Gondwana. Generally, low spore-pollen yields and poor preservational quality of the studied assemblages hinder more precise correlations and are inferred to be a function of an offshore marine depositional setting on the margin of the Neotethys Ocean, and thermal alteration associated with Cenozoic collisional tectonism between India and Asia.

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Exceptionally well-preserved organic remains of thecamoebians (testate amoebae) were preserved in marine sediments that straddle the greatest extinction event in the Phanerozoic: the Permian-Triassic Boundary. Outcrops from the Late Permian Zewan Formation and the Early Triassic Khunamuh Formation are represented by a complete sedimentary sequence at the Guryul Ravine Section in Kashmir, India, which is an archetypal Permian-Triassic boundary sequence [1]. Previous biostratigraphic analysis provides chronological control for the section, and a perspective of faunal turnover in the brachiopods, ammonoids, bivalves, conodonts, gastropods and foraminifera. Thecamoebians were concentrated from bulk sediments using palynological procedures, which isolated the organic constituents of preserved thecamoebian tests. The recovered individuals demonstrate exceptional similarity to the modern thecamoebian families Centropyxidae, Arcellidae, Hyalospheniidae and Trigonopyxidae, however, the vast majority belong to the Centropyxidae. This study further confirms the morphologic stability of the thecamoebian lineages through the Phanerozoic, and most importantly, their apparent little response to an infamous biological crisis in Earth’s history.