Fusulinoidean specimens referable to the genus Misellina have been found in the con glomerate within the Dobaru Formation of the Lower Cretaceous Wakino Subgroup, Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. These species suggest that the limestone of this area had a close relation ship to the limestone of Southeastern Asia and the Akiyoshi Limestone Group, Yamaguchi Prefecture, and that it could be considered as a limestone of the late Early Permian time of the Tethyan region. This paper

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... es the Misellina specimens from the Dobaru Formation. INTRODUCTION The Paleozoic Yobuno Group (M. Ota el at, 1992; Nakae, 1998) is widely distributed in Kitakyushu City, and has a distribution in the western margin of the Akiyoshi Terrane, which is one of Japanese PreJurassic terranes. Comparisons between fauna from this group and similar faunas in other countries are very important for studies of the continuity between Japanese terranes and neighbor ing ones, and discussing "paleo-Japan" in Carboniferous and Permian times, and for clarifying the origin of the Japanese Islands. However, very little has been reported about fossils of the Yobuno Group because their fossils are very rare and poorly preserved, owing to thermal metamorphism in Late Cretaceous. Recently, Y. Ota (2000, 2001, 2002) reported well-preserved fusulinoideans from conglomerates in the Lower Cretaceous Dobaru Formation of the Wakino Subgroup, Kitakyushu City. These fusulinoideans were derived from the under ling Paleozoic Yobuno Group and are very important fossils for the reconstruction of paleo-Kitakyushu in Car boniferous and Permian times. In this study of the Dobaru Formation, two types of Misellina are discriminated in the specimens. One type has a somewhat large shell, and seems to be referable to Misellina claudiae, which was originally described by Deprat (1912) in Tou-Tchou-Chann, China and is a lead ing fossil of the late Early Permian age in the Akiyoshi Limestone Group. The other type of Misellina has a rather small shell for this genus, and resembles Misellina Received 17January 2003 aliciae, also described by Deprat (1912) but in Yun-nan, China The present species were similarly discovered in a limestone cobble within the Dobaru Formation of the Wakino Subgroup, at Hazegatoge, Kokuraminami Ward, Kitakyushu City (Fig. 1 ). They are referred to the genus Misellina Schenck and Thompson, 1940. This paper deals with the systematic paleontology of these species.