Late Ordovician scolecodonts from the Qusaiba-1 core hole, central Saudi Arabia, and their paleogeographical affinities

This paper reports the discovery of Late Ordovician scolecodonts from the Qusaiba-1 core hole, central Saudi Arabia. The collection of about 100 relatively well preserved diagnostic jaws represents one of the richest jawed polychaete faunas from the Gondwanan realm and the first description of scolecodonts from the Arabian Peninsula. Scolecodonts were most diverse and abundant in the Quwarah Member and basal Sarah Formation, corresponding to the Ancyrochitina merga and Tanuchitina elongata chitinozoan zones (latest Katian to early Hirnantian). The polychaete assemblage contains up to 15 apparatus-based species and is dominated by the globally distributed genera Kettnerites, Oenonites and Atraktoprion, and a new genus of probable ramphoprionid affinity. Additionally, Skalenoprion and Kalloprion? are recorded, both for the first time from Gondwana. Characteristic of the assemblage is very low frequency of taxa with placognath-type jaws. Comparing the Qusaiba-1 assemblage with coeval faunas of Baltica and Laurentia revealed that northern Gondwana was more similar to mid-continent Laurentia than Baltica. High proportion of paulinitids, ramphoprionids and atraktoprionids, and scarcity of placognaths is typical of both northern Gondwana and Laurentia. The Baltic faunas, in contrast, had several endemic genera particularly among placognaths, whereas paulinitids and ramphoprionids were rare. This anomalous biogeographic pattern, diverging from that of most other fossil groups, cannot be fully explained without additional first-hand data from the Middle and early Late Ordovician of Gondwana and Laurentia.