A review of Lower and Middle Palaeozoic biostratigraphy in west peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand in its context within the Sibumasu Terrane

Fossils from the Cambrian to Devonian rocks of southern Thailand, the Langkawi Islands, mainland Kedah, Perlis, north Perak and central West Peninsular Malaysia are listed and reviewed, and their stratigraphy and correlation reassessed. The hitherto anomalous record of the trilobite Dalmanitina from Malaysia is reviewed and found to be of latest Ordovician (Hirnantian) age, rather than Lower Silurian age as previously reported, and is considered a probable synonym of the widespread Mucronaspis mucronata. A new stratigraphical nomenclature is erected for part of the Langkawi, mainland Kedah and Perlis area successions, in which the term Setul Limestone (which stretched from the Ordovician to the Devonian) is abandoned and replaced by the Middle Ordovician Kaki Bukit Limestone, the late Ordovician and early Silurian Tanjong Dendang Formation, the Silurian Mempelam Limestone, and the early Devonian Timah Tasoh Formation, all underlying the paraconformity with the late Devonian Langgun Red Beds. There was a single depositional basin in the generally shallow-water and cratonic areas of southern Thailand, Langkawi, and mainland Kedah and Perlis, in contrast to the deeper-water basin of north Perak. Only Silurian rocks are dated with certainty within another basin in central West Malaysia, near Kuala Lumpur, which were also cratonic and shallow-water, although to the east in west Pahang there are basal Devonian deeper-water sediments with graptolites. The area is reviewed in its position within the Sibumasu Terrane, which, in the Palaeozoic, also included central and northern Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and southwest China (part of Yunnan Province). (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.