Ordovician conodonts from the Watonga Formation, Port Macquarie, northeast New South Wales

Conodonts of Middle to Late Ordovician age, obtained from cherts of the Watonga Formation exposed in the Port Macquarie Block of the Mid North Coast region of New South Wales, establish this unit as the oldest biostratigraphically-dated part of the southern New England Fold Belt subduction-accretion complex. Correlation of the Watonga Formation with the Woolomin Formation, faunas from which are no older than Pridoli, cannot be sustained. This revised age provides evidence of possible early Palaeozoic subduction-accretion in this region at the same time as arc magmatism, volcaniclastic sedimentation and exhumation of high-pressure metamorphic rocks were proceeding further west.