Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2016
Late Permian reefal blocks exposed in the Ba'id area of the Eastern Oman Mountains yield a sphinctozoan assemblage that has not been studied previously. The sphinctozoan fauna described here is the first report of such an assemblage from the Arabian Peninsula. Approximately 70 samples were studied with respect to systematic paleontology, as well as frequency of taxa based on presence/absence lists. The sphinctozoans include 14 genera and 25 species. One genus (Rahbahthalamia) and five species (Amblysiphonella omanica, Salzburgia? irregularis, Welteria? hawasinensis, Thaumastocoelia? irregularis, and Girtyocoelia gracilis) are described as new. Amblysiphonella Steinmann (1882), Colospongia Laube (1865), and Sollasia Steinmann (1882) have the highest species diversity. On a generic level, Sollasia, Amblysiphonella, and Parauvanella Senowbari-Daryan and Di Stefano (1988) occur most frequently in the investigated samples. The described fauna exhibits close relationships to sphinctozoan faunas known from the Middle and Late Permian of China and Tunisia.