Abstract Orthophragmines are a group of discoidal, lenticular or stellate ‘orbitoidal’ larger benthic foraminifera that thrived in shallow-marine environments low-to-middle latitudes during the late Paleocene and Eocene. They consist two phylogenetically independent families with similar morphology, such as Discocyclinidae (with Tethyan genera— Discocyclina Nemkovella ) Orbitoclypeidae three Or...

Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is one of the hypersaline lakes of world. In the Urmia region a Cenozoic island arc was formed by northeastward subduction of Neo-Tethyan oceanic plate beneath central Iran; the lake is therefore located in the fore-arc basin tectonic setting. Satellite imagery of the Urmia region illustrates that the trend of faults are in two main NE-SW and NW-SE directions. Th...

The Upper Cretaceous was a period when reefs and reef mounds were abundant in many parts of the world (JAMES, 1983). One of the most remarkable features of the Cretaceous carbonate platforms in tropical and subtropical environments of the Tethyan realm, was the development of facies complexes dominated by rudists, with or without associated corals (MASSE & PHILIP, 1981; ROSS & SKELTON, 1993; GI...

Middle Jurassic radiolarians have been recovered from the western Pacific for the first time. The oldest faunas are assigned to the middle and upper Tricolocapsa conexa Zone, indicating a Bathonian/Callovian age. The faunas contain more than 30 species and are characterized by an abundance of small nassellarians with a constricted distal end. The faunas compare well with Tethyan faunas, and are...

a total of 12 species of marine gastropods, among which two taxa are new, is reported for the first time from the miocene deposits of khavich section, south of sirjan, kerman. gastropods assemblage in khavich area indicates deposition in shallow, warm ramp-type carbonate platform. the miocene and even oligocene gastropod assemblages, relatively similar to khavich section, reported from the othe...

The biogeography and evolutionary history of the shallow marine fauna in the western Indian Ocean (WIO) is poorly known, as are the consequences of ancient and recent biodiversity-generating processes. Inwater surveys of scleractinian corals show maximum diversity in a core region centered on the northern Mozambique Channel. Maximum species richness is at ≈300 with a threshold of ≈250 that diff...