Evidence Bearing on the Age of the Saline Series in the Salt Range of the Punjab

Abstract

The Punjab Saline Series has been assigned to the Cambrian and also to the Eocene. Gee has described field evidence which points to a Cambrian age, but Sahni has found microscopic plant and insect remains which have been interpreted as demonstrating an Eocene age. The application of Schultze's technique (also adopted by Sahni) to samples from the undoubted Cambrian rocks of the Salt Range has shown that these too occasionally contain a microflora which includes elements that are not so far known to be indigenous to Cambrian rocks. Its occurrence awaits explanation. N the Salt Range of the Punjab the following succession occurs:-

Biostratigraphical dating conundrums in the Cambrian and earlier stratigraphy of the Indian subcontinent

“…While Hsü (1947) failed to find any organic material in the basal unit of the Jhelum Group, the Khewra Formation or "Purple Sandstone", Dr. A.K. Ghosh and his associates not only replicated Prof Sahni's finds from the Salt Range Formation, but also found similar structures in association with many stratigraphic levels within the Jhelum Group (Ghosh et al, 1951) including in the Baghanwala Formation, which contains pseudomorphs after halite (Ghosh & Bose, 1947), and also in the Khussak and Jutana formations and elsewhere (Ghosh & Bose, 1952;Ghosh et al, 1951). Others too reported similar finds in rocks from the Salt Range and elsewhere (e.g.…”

“…Nevertheless, the references used to support this conjecture were the claims that derived taxa first occur in rocks far lower in the stratigraphic column than previously recognised (e.g. Ghosh & Bose, 1947;1952;Ghosh et al, 1951). In the eighth edition (Brown, 2008, p. 12) used the Salt Range controversy to claim that "almost all of today's plant and animal phyla-including the flowering plants, vascular plants and animals-appear at the base of the fossil record", which is again a nonsensical statement even if Ghosh had been correct about the age of the fossils.…”

Observation on some Palynological contributions to Indian Stratigraphy

“…No authentic land plant spore has as yet been proved from these sediments. The records of trilete spores from Vindhyan sediments which undoubtedly prove the presence of land vegetation are not authentic, the evidences recorded by Ghosh et al (1951), Ghosh and Bose (1950), Jacob et al (1953) and Bose (1956) are not convincing. This point brings us to an important presumption that the land plants had not set foot on the landscape till about the Vindhyan times.…”

Evidence of Vascular Plants in the Cambrian

“…A coarse network ornamentation, continuous membranous wing and even bladders (?) are observed (Ghosh and Bose, 1950;Ghosh, Sen and Bose, 1951;Ghosh and Bose, 1952;Jacob, 1953). The size of the spores generally varies from 5 to 50 microns with the largest ones ranging from 25 to 130 microns.…”

“…Such a remarkable variety of spores in Cambrian sediments is impressive and certainly unexpected. Moreover, besides the spores Reissinger (1939), Ghosh and Bose (1950), Ghosh, Sen, Bose (1951), Ghosh and Bose (1952), and Jacoh (1953 a-b) have found tiny fragments of woody elements, which, despite poor preservation, show scalariform and pitted (simple and bordered pits) tracheids.…”