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MEMOIRS OF THE GEOLOGlCAL SURVEY OF INDIA MElVIOIRS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA VOLUME XXXVI, PART 3 THE TRIAS OF THE HIMALAYAS. By C. DIENER, PH.0., Professor of Palceontology at the Universz'ty of Vienna Published by order of the Government of India __ ______ _ ____ __ ___ r§'~-CIL04l.~y_, ~ ,.. __ ..::-;:;_·.•,· ' .' ,~P-- - _. - •1~ r_. 1..1-l -. --~ ·~-'. .. ~--- .,,- .'~._. - CALCU'l"l'A: V:/f/ .. -:-~,_'."'' SOLD AT THE Ol<'FICE OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY o'U-1kI>i'A,- 27, CHOWRINGHim ROAD LONDON: MESSRS. KEGAN PAUT,, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. BERLIN : MESSRS. FRIEDLANDEH UND SOHN 1912. CONTENTS. am I• PA.GE, 1.-INTBODUCTION l 11.-LJ'rERA.TURE • • 3· III.-GENERAL DE\'ELOPMEKT OF THE Hrn:ALAYA.K TRIAS 111 A. Himalayan Facies 15 1.-The Lower Trias 15 (a) Spiti . Ip (b) Painkhanda . ·20 (c) Eastern Johar 25 (d) Byans . 26 (e) Kashmir 27 (/) Interregional Correlation of fossiliferous horizons 30 (g) Correlation with the Ceratite beds of the Salt Range 33 (Ti) Correlation with the Lower Trias of Europe, Xorth America and Siberia . 36 (i) The Permo-Triassic boundary . 42 II.-The l\Iiddle Trias. (Muschelkalk and Ladinic stage) 55 (a) The Muschelkalk of Spiti and Painkhanda v5 (b) The Muschelkalk of Kashmir . 67 (c) The llluschelka)k of Eastern Johar 68 (d) The l\Iuschelkalk of Byans 68 (e) The Ladinic stage.of Spiti 71 (f) The Ladinic stage of Painkhanda, Johar and Byans 75 (g) Correl;i.tion "ith the Middle Triassic deposits of Europe and America . 77 III.-The Upper Trias (Carnie, Korie, and Rhretic stages) 85 (a) Classification of the Upper Trias in Spiti and Painkhanda 85 (b) The Carnie stage in Spiti and Painkhanda 86 (c) The Korie and Rhretic stages in Spiti and Painkhanda 94 (d) Interregional correlation and homotaxis of the Upper Triassic deposits of Spiti and Painkhanda with those of Europe and America 108 (e) The Upper Trias of Kashmir and the Pamir 114 A.-Kashmir . 114 B.-Pamir 116 (i) The Upper Trias of Byans 117 CONTEXTS, PAGE. IV.-Summary 126 B. Tibetan Facies 132 (a) Lower Trias 132 (b) Musehelkalk 133 (c) Lower Carnie stage 13.'i (d) Carnie stage . 135 (e) Dachsteinkalk 138 (/) Summary IV.-TBE CEPHALOPOD HORIZONS OJ!' THE HIMALAYAN TRIAS 140 V.-TBE INDIAN TRIASSIC PROVIJiCE l41j VI.-GEOGIUPBICAL INDEX llil "VIL-StTBJECT INDEX Hi5 MEMOIRS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF INDIA. THE TRIAS OF THE HIMALAYAS. 'By c. DIENER, PH.D., Professor of Palceontology at the University of Vienna. 1.-INTRODUCTION. In a note accompanying the description of the Muschelkalk in Spiti in the first part of the present volume by H. Hayden (page 72), and in a chapter treating with the correlation of the Mesozoic beds of Spiti with those of other parts of India and of Europe (page 88) it was proposed to devote a second part of this volume to a summary of the Trias of the Himalayas. A paper treating with this subject, which had been left by the fate Dr. A. v. Krafft in 1901, was entrusted to me for a careful revision by C. L. Griesbach, then Director of the Geological Survey of India. But the fragmentary character of the paper, consisting only of scattered and unarranged notes, induced me to postpone this task, until the palooontological descriptions of the new materials from the Triassic rocks of the Himalayas had been finished. The advisability of basing a sum­ mary of the Trias of the Himalaya on the results of an examination of the entire stratigraphical and fossil mat.erials then available, was obvious. This examination being now finished and the geological explo­ ration of the Central Himalayas having come to a close for several seasons, a detailed paper on this subject is justified. This paper, however, can hardly be called a revision of A. v. Krafft's original notes, but is almost entirely my own work. ( 202 ) DIENER: TRIAS OF THE HIMALAYAS. Fourteen years have elapsed since the publicatio~ of the results of the ~xpedition of 1892, in which Griesbach, MiddleDllBs ~nd I took ~a1:. Short! afterwards the study of the sedimentary deposits of the Huna­ la.yas :as resumed; areas formerly known only more or less superficiall~, were re-examined in greater detail and a very large a.mount of new fossil material has been obtained. Both the observations in the field, which are chiefly due to H. Hayden, A. von Krafft, La Touche, Smith, Noetling and Walker, and the subsequent examination of the collections have increased our knowledge considerably, particularly so with respect to the Trias. While formerly only the sections of Painkhanda (Shal­ shal cliff, Bamba.nag cliff) were known in any detail, we have now equally detailed "ccounts of those in Spiti and considerable additions h~ve been made t) our knowlelge of those in Eutern Johar and Byans and in the region oi. the exotic blocks between Ma.Ila .Johar and Hundrs. It therefore seems possible now to make an attempt to corrcla te those four different areas. Recent researches tend to show that the Trias, far from being de­ veloped uniformly throughout the length and breadth of the Hirwilayas, has some very marked geographical peculiarities. We can no longer characterise any individual section :is a. "type-section" of the Hima­ layan Trias. To do so would, indeed, be as incorrect as to speak rif a pa.rticular section in the South-eastern Tirol or in the Sa.lzkamnwrgut as a type-section of the Alpine Trias. In fact the Himalayan Trias clearly shows tho3e changes of fa('ies which are common to most sedimentary deposits of marine origin. and which, if not so rapid or abrupt as in the case of the Alpine Tria~. are yet almost equally marked. This becomes especially evident. from l?_ comparison of the sections of Byans and Malla Johar with those of Spiti and Painkhanda. My examination of the fossil collections ma.de by Hayden and A. v. Krafft in Spiti and Malla J oha.r and my revision of A. v. Krafft's ~em~ir on the Cephalopoda. of the Lower Trias have delayed the writing of this paper for a longer period than I had anticipated. This delay, however, has enabled me to include many new facts, which were not ~nown to Noetling, when publishing his summary of the Trias of Asia m . Leth~a mesozoica (Vol. I, Pt. 2, Stuttgart, 1905). A direct com­ parison will, I trust, convince the reader that the present pa.per has not been rendered altogether unuecesaa.ry by Noetling's memoir. ( 203 ) LITERATURE. 3 11.-LITERATURE. Before entering upon a description of the Triassic sediments of tho Himalayas, a short historical retrospect of the development of our knowledge of those deposits may be deemed appropriate. The credit of the discovery of Triassic deposits in the Central Hima­ layas is due to Captain (afterwards General Sir Richard) Strachey,1 who in 1851 mentioned their presence in several localities in the neighbour­ hood of the Niti Pass. Their correlation with the beds of St. Cassian by Greenough (1855), by E. Suess 2 (1862) and by T. W. Salter3 (1865) was based on an examination of the fossils, which had been collected by Strachey from loose blocks, not in situ. Although the defective state of our knowledge of the stratigraphy of the Alpine Trias and the wide range of interpretation adopted in Triassic species of Cephalopoda prevented any attempt at an exact cor­ relation at that time, the general statement of a remarkable analogy with the Alpine Trias has been proved to be correct. The existence of Triassic beds was confirmed by an examination of fossils, which had been collected in Spiti and Hundes by Dr. Gerard and by the brothers von Schlagintweit. H. F. Blanford~ described the Gerard collection and proved one of the Triassic species of ammonites (Ptychi'tes Gerardi Blfd.) to belong to a genus characteristic of the Alpine Muschelkalk. The Cephalopoda of the Schlagintweit collections were examined by A. Oppel,5 the brachiopods and bivalves by C. W. Guembel. 6 Oppel l R. Strachey : On the geology of part of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet, Q1tart. Journ. Geol. Soc., VII, 1851, pp. 292-310. 2 E. Suess: Verhandl. K. K. Geol. Reichsanst., Wien, XII, p. 255 (Sitzg. 31, Juli 1862). 3 T. W. Salter and H. F. Blandford : Palreontology of Niti in the Northern Himalayas, Calcutta, 1865. 4 H. F. Blanford: On Dr. Gerard's collection of fossils from the Spiti valley in the Asiatic Society's Museum. Journal Asiat. Soc. of Bengal, 1863, No. 2, pp. 121·138. • A. Oppel : Ueber Ostindische Fossilreate aus den sekundaeren Ablagerungen von Spiti and Gnari Khorsum in Tibet. Palreontol. Milleilungen aus dem Museum des Kgl. bayrischen Staates, I, p. 267, 6 C. W. Guembel: Ueber daa Vorkommen von unteren Triasschichten in Hocha­ sien (no.ch den von den Gebruedern von Schlagintweit geaammelten Fundstuecken beurteilt)._,,_ Sitzgsber. Kgl. bayr. Akad. d. Wiss. Muenchen, 1865 (XI), pp. 348-366. B ~ ( 204 ) 4 DIENER : TRIAS OF THE HIMALAYAS. recognised the Triassic character of seventeen species of ammonites. Guembel assigned three species of bivalves to the Buntsandstein. In the meantime E. Beyrich 1 proved the ammonites described by Oppel to be of Muschelkalk age. Thus the presence of two different Triassic horizons had been estab­ lished in the Himalayas, of the Lower Trias (Buntsandstein) in a bivalve­ bearing facies, and of the Muschelkalk in a facies of dark limestone rich in Cephalopoda. But this establishment had been based on the study of fossils only discovered by travellers in different parts of the sedi­ mentary belt of the great range.

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