Trilobite fauna of basal Cambrian Series 3 (Stage 5) from the Parahio Valley (Spiti), Northwest Himalaya, India and its biostratigraphic significance

Global Standard Stratotype-Section and Point (GSSP) for the conterminous base of the Miaolingian Series and Wuliuan Stage (Cambrian) at Balang, Jianhe, Guizhou, China

“…These two zones have been recognized in a number of sections of the Kaili Formation in eastern Guizhou, for example, the Miaobanpo (Zhao et al, 2001a(Zhao et al, , b, 2005(Zhao et al, , 2011, the Jianshan (Zhao et al, 2008), the Fujiachong (Zhao et al, 2012a), the Sanwan (Zhao et al, 2012b) and the Pingzhai (Yuan et al, 2002;Zhao et al, 2012a) sections. The level coinciding with FAD of O. indicus may correlate to the base of the Tianpeng Formation of platform facies in Mengzi County of Yunnan Province, South China (Zhao et al, 2014), the base of Amecephalus arrojosensis Zone of Emigrant Formation in Great Basin, USA, and occurs in the Parahio Formation, Spiti area, Indian Himalaya (see Singh et al, 2016;Hughes et al, 2018), and the corresponding level in northwestern Korea (Saito, 1934).…”

“…6(a)-(d)) has an intercontinental distribution and its first appearance has been acknowledged as one of the most favorable level for the GSSP defining the base of a global stage (e.g. Jell and Hughes, 1997;Yuan et al, 1997;Hughes and Jell, 1999;Sundberg et al, 1999Sundberg et al, , 2010Sundberg et al, , 2011Sundberg et al, , 2016Geyer and Shergold, 2000;Korovnikov, 2001Korovnikov, , 2006Peng and Babcock, 2001;Shergold andGeyer, 2001, 2003;Zhao et al, 2001aZhao et al, , b, 2004Zhao et al, , 2006Zhao et al, , 2007Zhao et al, , 2012aZhao et al, , b, c, 2014Zhao et al, , 2017Yuan et al, 2002;Peng, 2003;Sundberg and McCollum, 2003;Babcock et al, 2005Babcock et al, , 2014Sundberg, 2005, 2007;Peng et al, 2006Peng et al, , 2012bGeyer and Peel, 2011;Hughes, 2016;Singh et al, 2016;Esteve et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2017). Besides South China, the species has been identified from northern India (Indian Himalaya) (Reed, 1910;Jell and Hughes, 1997;Peng et al, 2009b;Hughes, 2016;Singh et al, 2016), western USA (Sundberg andMcCollum, 1997, 2003), North Greenland…”

“…Although most of the polymerid trilobites from the biozones are endemic, a few of them provide, more or less, correlation tools of regional or intercontinental scale and allow tielines to be established into some other Cambrian faunal realms. Particularly useful guide fossils are the pandemic forms such as Oryctocephalus indicus, Ovatoryctocara, Oryctocephalops, Oryctocephalites, and Burlingia (Reed, 1910;Saito, 1934;Lermontova, 1940;Shergold, 1969;Lu et al, 1974;Zhang et al, 1980;Whittington, 1994;Jell and Hughes, 1997;Sundberg andMcCollum, 1997, 2003;Yuan et al, 1997Yuan et al, , 2002Zhao et al, 2001aZhao et al, , b, 2006Zhao et al, , 2012bZhao et al, , 2014Sundberg et al, 2011Sundberg et al, , 2016Geyer and Peel, 2011;Yuan and Esteve, 2015;Hughes, 2016;Singh et al, 2016;Esteve et al, 2017), the nektobenthic forms such as Redlichia and Bathynotus (Kobayashi, 1935;Lu, 1950;Lu and Chien, 1964;Ӧpik, 1970;Zhang et al, 1980;Whittington, 1988;Guo et al, 1999;Shergold and Whittington, 2000;Yuan et al, 2002;Kruse et al, 2004;Peng et al, 2009Peng et al, , 2014Webster, 2009;Goryaeva et al, 2012;Hughes, 2016;…”

“…5). Pagetia significans has been recorded from the Miaolingian strata of Australia (Jell, 1975), North Korea (Kobayashi, 1944), and Indian Himalaya (Jell and Hughes, 1997;Singh et al, 2016).…”

The Cambrian palaeontological record of the Indian subcontinent

“…showing that it occurs at several horizons within about 6 metres of section in both the Parahio Valley (Singh et al, 2016) The great majority of brachiopods and small shelly fossils from the section were extracted by acid digestion of carbonate. Trace fossils occur at more levels than those illustrated in Hughes et al (2013) but, because of their limited stratigraphic use, were not studied as intensely.…”