Field guide and catalogue of Ordovician–Devonian fossils from the Cargelligo and Nymagee 1:250,000 mapping areas, central New South Wales

This study re-examines more than 2,000 fossil samples from 51 stratigraphic units spanning the Ordovician to Devonian sedimentary successions of the Cargelligo and Nymagee 1:250,000 geological map sheet areas in central New South Wales. It provides a comprehensive review of all published and unpublished reports available on the palaeontology and biostratigraphy of this region, which encompasses the southern Cobar Superbasin and its underlying Ordovician turbiditic and associated siliciclastic sequences. The latter sequences contain graptolite and conodont assemblages of Floian to Katian age, recorded from the Wagga, Girilambone, Bendoc and Margules groups and their constituent formations and members. Conodonts, along with trilobites, corals, brachiopods, stromatoporoids, molluscs and other invertebrates, fish scales and plates, trace fossils and plant fossils of late Silurian to Early Devonian age are recorded from 11 groups (including the Mount Dam Limestone with uncertain status) and their 27 constituent formations or members of the Cobar Supergroup and the overlying Mulga Downs Group within the Cobar Superbasin. Biostratigraphic reappraisals presented in this report underpin a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the Cobar Superbasin, providing more precise stratigraphic controls on the distribution of known and potential mineral deposits hosted in these sedimentary sequences.