HISTORY SOUTHERN THAILAND

Trang is a busy trade center.

Between the 6th. and 12. century the area had a important seaport for trade between the Malay Peninsular and the Islands around today's Indonesia.

From around the years 600 - 1400 history shows that southern Thailand was under the influence of the Srivijaya empire centered in Jambi and Palembang on Sumatra, Surat Thani was a major center in this empire and Trang functioned as a transshipping point between Sumatra and the east coast of southern Thailand.

Southern Thailand historic records are minimal but there are some indication that Chaiya in the Surat Province was for some time the capital of Srivijaya. The Borom Temple in Chaya contains are rebuilt pagoda in Srivijaya style.
 

In the 13th. century Thai history data indicate that the Sukhothai kingdom

took over and stretched their kingdom from Nakhon Si Thammarat (south of Surat Thani) to Vientiane in Laos and present day Bago in Myanmar (Burma),

During the 14th and 15th the Thai kings of Ayuthaya expanded southwards and the area got under their influence.

Colonial times history data of southern Thailand show that, Portuguese (1511), Dutchmen,  Spaniards, French, Englishmen and others landed at the West coast on the search of lucrative trade.

Other history data of southern Thailand indicate that some of the European mutated to pirates and robbed the merchant vessels and coastal villages in the Andaman Sea, since  the pirates were much better armed the merchant vessels were no match to them, a very lucrative pray.

On top of it no one in the countries around had the power to implement any security functions in the surrounding waters, this was a rather unsafe part of Thailand history, n terms of cruelties there was not much differences between the foreign and the local pirates.

Throughout southern Thailand history, Thailand was a place of trans - shipment for the trade to and from the Far east, therefore between China and Japan and the countries west over the ocean. Dutchmen based in the Thai capital (at that time) of Ayutthaya had a lucrative trade monopole on this trade.
 
The sea route around the Malay peninsula was very long and uncertain (sailing ships) most ships unload their cargo at the West coast in Mergui (Myeik in the present-day Burma) and the goods were brought per river vessel and land route Eastwards to the gulf of Thailand.  History shows that this trade brought a lot of money into southern Thailand and many of the foreigners simply remained afterwards.

History data indicate that Thailand was lucky not to get occupied by the colonial powers and therefore was not dragged into the second world war and the local south east Asian wars after.

Today, peaceful visitors from the whole world, called tourists, who know to estimate the attractive surroundings bring again a lot of money and different thinking into the country, this is a part of history southern Thailand .

First dinosaur from the Shan-Thai Block of SE Asia: a Jurassic sauropod from the southern peninsula of Thailand
Journal of the Geological Society, May 2005 by Buffetaut, Eric, Suteethorn, Varavudh, Tong, Haiyan, Kosir, Adrijan

A vertebra collected from the Jurassic non-marine Khlong Min Formation of southern Thailand is referred to the family Euhelopodidae, a group of sauropod dinosaurs that apparently was endemic to eastern Asia during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, at a time when that part of the world was isolated from other land masses. The occurrence of a euhelopodid in the Jurassic of the Shan-Thai Block supports the idea of a collision of the Shan-Thai Block with the Indochina Block, thus establishing connections with 'mainland Asia', early in the Mesozoic, probably before the Jurassic.

Keywords: southern Thailand, Shan-Thai Block, Jurassic, Sauropoda, biogeography.

South-East Asia consists of a mosaic of microcontinents originating from the northern margin of eastern Gondwana, which, after drifting northward, collided with each other and with South China in the late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic (Metcalfe 1996, 1998). Abundant vertebrate remains are known from the non-marine Mesozoic formations of the Indochina Block, mainly on the Khorat Plateau of northeastern Thailand, where they range in age from Late Triassic to mid-Cretaceous (Buffetaut & Suteethorn 1998; Buffetaut et al. 2003). The record of non-marine Mesozoic vertebrates from other SE Asian terranes is much less well known. It consists, so far, of freshwater forms from a few Mid- to Late Jurassic localities in the southern peninsula of Thailand (Buffetaut et al. 1994b), which was part of the Shan-Thai, or Sibumasu, Block, a terrane comprising eastern Burma, western Thailand and western Malaya (Fig. 1). The Jurassic vertebrate assemblage from southern Thailand includes hybodont sharks, actinopterygian fishes, lungfishes (Martin et al. 1997), temnospondyl amphibians (Buffetaut et al. 1994a), turtles (Tong et al. 2002) and crocodilians. No remains of dinosaurs had previously been reported from these deposits.

We report here the discovery of sauropod remains in the Jurassic of the southern peninsula of southern Thailand. These are the first dinosaur specimens to be recorded from the Shan-Thai Block and are significant in our understanding of the biogeographical relationships of this terrane in the Mesozoic. Since this first discovery, sauropod bones have been discovered from continental redbeds in Phayao Province, northern Thailand, which is also part of the Shan-Thai Block (Buffetaut et al. 2003). These specimens are currently being prepared and will eventually complement the biogeographical information provided by the find from southern Thailand.

Geological setting

The dinosaur remains described here come from an outcrop of the Khlong Min Formation in Khlong Thorn District, Krabi Province, about 20 km south of the town of Khlong Thorn (Fig. 1). The Khlong Min Formation is the basal unit of the Mesozoic Trang Group of the southern peninsula of Thailand (Meesook et al. 2002); it consists of non-marine sandstones, claystones and limestones. Palynomorphs from the Khlong Min Formation suggest a Late Jurassic age (Lei 1993), whereas charophytes suggest a Mid-Jurassic age (Feist, cited by Buffetaut et al. 1994b). The turtle Siamochelys peninsularis is similar to Jurassic turtles from Central Asia (Tong et al. 2002). Recently discovered hybodont shark teeth may also support a Jurassic age (G. Cuny, pers. comm.). On the basis of these indications, a Mid- to Late Jurassic age is assigned to the Khlong Min Formation.

The outcrop that has yielded the dinosaur bones shows a succession of sandstone and limestone beds, some of which contain abundant plant material, including large tree trunks and amber. The dinosaur bones themselves were found in a bed of grey calcareous breccia-conglomerate that also contains crocodile teeth and turtle plates referable to Siamochelys. The bed contains light to dark grey carbonate clasts (millimetres to centimetres in diameter) embedded in a grey to yellowish fine-grained carbonate-clayey matrix. Clasts (nodules) are either micritic or of similar composition and structure (fine crystalline calcite spar) to the matrix. Many clasts exhibit simple sparfilled cracks or complex 'septarian' cracking features. Polygonal septarian cracks are filled with sparry calcite cements or micrite matrix. Circumgranular cracking is common. The structure of most of the clasts (nodules) is homogeneous; some may exhibit tubular pores (root tubules?) and a dark grey-brown (ferruginous) staining or mottling pattern. The matrix is impure fine-grained carbonate with a high variability in crystal sizes and structure, from homogeneous micrite and microspar to fine crystalline calcite spar. Fine-grained quartz is locally abundant. Indistinctive peloidal (glaebular) texture can be seen in some parts of the micritic matrix. Pyrite framboids and disseminated pyrite occur in the matrix and within the clasts. Except for a few small bone fragments, no fossils have been observed within the clasts or in the matrix. The micromorphological features (nodules, calcite-filled cracks (crystallaria), glaebular-peloidal fabric, ?rhizoliths) are indicative of a pedogenic origin (e.g. Wright & Tucker 1991; Alonso-Zarza 2003), which is in agreement with the supposed non-marine nature of the deposit.

Description

The only identifiable dinosaur specimen (SDRC-KB1-1) from Khlong Thorn District is a large (length of centrum as preserved is 274 mm), incomplete and somewhat distorted vertebra (Fig. 2), kept at the Sahatsakhan Dinosaur Research Centre, Kalasin Province. It lacks the dorsal part of the neural arch (which is broken just below the level of the zygapophyses) and the ventral part of the centrum. The general morphology of the vertebra and the fact that both the parapophysis and diapophysis were located on the neural arch indicate a position in the mid-dorsal section of the vertebral column. The centrum is markedly opismocoeous, with a deeply concave posterior articular face. The convex anterior face is poorly preserved, its surface being largely abraded. Where the outer cortex has been destroyed, the centrum shows a highly cancellous inner structure consisting of alveoli enclosed in thin bony walls, giving it a 'honeycombed' appearance. The sides of the centrum bear an oval, simple, relatively small (100 mm × 50 mm) and moderately deep pleurocoel. Both the anterior and posterior rims of the pleurocoel are rounded rather than angular or acuminate. The openings of the neural canal are circular in outline and relatively small. Anteriorly, there is a dorsoventrally elongate depression above the neural canal, forming a hypantrum. Posteriorly, there is a matching vertical ridge above the neural canal, the infrapostzygapophyseal lamina (nomenclature of vertebral laminae from Wilson (1999)), bounded laterally by deep grooves, which appears to have buttressed a hyposphene, as in Omeisaurus junghsiensis (Dong et al. 1983). A subvertical ridge, the anterior centroparapophyseal lamina, forms the anterolateral edge of the neural arch and rises in the direction of the broken parapophysis. On the lateral side of the neural arch, an oblique ridge, the posterior centroparapophyseal lamina, extends upwards in the direction of the parapophysis. Slightly higher on the neural arch and more posteriorly, another ridge, the posterior centrodiapophyseal lamina, rises in the direction of the broken diapophysis.

This vertebra is in the size range of the mid-dorsals of the 22 m long type specimen of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis (Yang & Zhao 1972), or slightly larger, and must have belonged to an animal of about that length. The centrum clearly shows a distinctive 'spongy' or 'honey-combed' internal structure, with a network of thin bony partitions enclosing numerous empty spaces. This character has been well described in titanosaurs (Powell 2003). It was used by Wilson & Sereno (1998), among others, to unite the Chinese sauropod Euhelopus and titanosaurs in their 'Somphospondyli', as opposed to other sauropods in which the pleurocels open into very large simple cavities. Wilson (2002) used this character, among others, to define the Titanosauriformes, including Somphospondyli plus Brachiosaurus (however, in the latter spongy bone occupies only the condylar part of the centra, the rest being occupied by vast hollow spaces: Janensch 1947, 1950). In fact, centra with a honeycombed structure also occur in the Chinese Jurassic genera Omeisaurus (He et al. 1988) and Mamenchisaurus (Ouyang & Ye 2001). It has often been suggested that Euhelopus, Omeisaurus and Mamenchisaurus belong together in a family-rank taxon. Steel (1970) placed them in the subfamily Euhelopodinae (erected as the family Helopodidae by Wiman (1929), emended byRomer (1956)). He et al. (1984, 1988) placed them in the family Mamenchisauridae, originally proposed by Yang & Zhao (1972) for Mamenchisaurus alone. This systematic arrangement was accepted by various Chinese workers, including Dong (1992), Sun et al. (1992) and Ouyang & Ye (2001). However, Euhelopodidae should be used instead of its junior synonym Mamenchisauridae. Upchurch (1995) accepted the validity of Euhelopodidae, in which he also included Datousaurus and Shunosaurus (Upchurch 1998). Martin-Rolland (1999) placed most Chinese sauropods in the family Euhelopodidae, subdivided into Shunosaurinae and Euhelopodinae. Although the validity of Euhelopodidae was doubted by Wilson & Sereno (1998) and Wilson (2002), recent descriptions of new specimens of Omeisaurus (Tang et al. 2001) and Mamenchisaurus (Ouyang & Ye 2001) support the inclusion of Euhelopus, Mamenchisaurus and Omeisaurus in a single family. Shunosaurus shows many primitive features (including vertebrae that do not show a honeycombed structure: Zhang et al. 1984) and should probably be excluded from Euhelopodidae.

In addition to the honeycombed structure of the centrum, the vertebra from southern Thailand shares with euhelopodids pleurocoels that are relatively small, simple, with a rounded caudal margin. This last character is considered plesiomorphic by Upchurch (1998). Pleurocoel shape seems to distinguish the Euhelopodidae from other sauropods with 'spongy' centra, such as Bmchiosaurus, with its large and deep pleurocoels (Janensch 1950), and titanosaurs (Powell 1992; Gomani et al. 1999), in which the pleurocoels tend to have a tapering, acute caudal margin (the derived condition according to Salgado et al. (1997) and Upchurch (1998)). On the basis of the above-mentioned characters, the vertebra from southern Thailand is referred to the family Euhelopodidae. No identification at a lower taxonomic level is possible.
Palaeobiogeographical implications

The abundant Mesozoic vertebrates from the Indochina Block mostly indicate faunal links with Eurasia (Buffetaut & Suteethorn 1998) as early as the Late Triassic, in agreement with palaeogeographical reconstructions showing connections between the Indochina Block, South China, North China and Laurasia as early as the Late Permian (Metcalfe 1998). The situation of the Shan-Thai Block during the Mesozoic is less clear: although Metcalfe (1996, 1998) indicated collision with the Indochina Block in the Late Triassic, a conclusion also reached by Carter & Bristow (2003). Stokes et al. (1996), on the basis of geological evidence from Laos, have suggested that the Shan-Thai-Indochina suturing occurred in the Late Jurassic.

Few of the currently identified Mesozoic vertebrates from the Shan-Thai Block are relevant from a biogeographical point of view. A lugfish tooth from the Khlong Min Formation resembles a Jurassic form from Sichuan, which supports geographical links between the Shan-Thai Block and China (Martin et al. 1997). Similarly, the freshwater turtle Siamochelys peninsularis resembles Jurassic taxa from Central Asia and China, and does suggest connections between the Shan-Thai Block and 'mainland Asia' (Tong et al. 2002). The sauropod from Khlong Tom provides supporting evidence in this regard.

The Euhelopodidae have frequently been considered as an endemic group of sauropods geographically restricted to eastern Asia (He et al. 1984; Upchurch 1995; Martin-Rolland 1999; Ouyang & Ye 2001), which evolved there during a period of geographical isolation (Russell 1993) caused by the formation of the Turgai sea between Europe and Asia during the Jurassic (Upchurch et al. 2002). Canudo et al. (2002) referred isolated teeth from the Barremian of Spain to the Euhelopodidae on the basis of a cingulum-like ridge on the lingual surface, but this attribution is disputable (Buffetaut & Suteemorn 2004), and at the moment the Euhelopodidae appear to be an essentially endemic eastern Asian group. They are represented in the Mesozoic of the Indochina Block mainly by teeth and jaw remains from the Phu Kradung (latest Jurassic?) and Sao Khua (Early Cretaceous) formations of northeastern Thailand (Buffetaut et al. 2002, 2003; Buffetaut & Suteethorn 2004).

The occurrence of an endemic eastern Asian sauropod in the Jurassic of southern Thailand thus supports the idea of a land connection between the Shan-Thai Block and the rest of eastern Asia in the Mid- to Late Jurassic (Fig. 3). It reinforces the biogeographical evidence already provided by dipnoans and Siamochelys peninsularis, and is in agreement with the hypothesis of an early (Late Triassic?) collision between the Shan-Thai Block and the Indochina Block, as envisioned by Metcalfe (1996, 1998) and Carter & Bristow (2003), rather than the Late Jurassic suturing suggested by Stokes et al. (1996).

This work was supported by the ECLIPSE 2 programme of CNRS, the TRF-CNRS Special Programme for Biodiversity Research and Training (grant BRT R-245007), the Department of Mineral Resources (Bangkok), the Jurassic Foundation, and the CNRS-Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences & Arts co-operation agreement.
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