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Pakistan Stratigraphy
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Mesozoic • Cretaceous

Pab Sandstone

Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian)

Cretaceous in the time scale →

Stratigraphic position

In the Sulaiman Fold Belt column
LimestoneShale / mudSandstoneFossils recordedConformable

Band colour = period; texture = dominant rock type. Lines between bands mark the contact type. True scale makes height ∝ recorded thickness; hatched = thickness not recorded. Ages approximate, for ordering.

This unit (highlighted) within its province column; faded ends continue above and below. Line style marks the contact type.

A thick, clean Maastrichtian sandstone of the Pab Range — one of the main oil-and-gas reservoir rocks of the Indus Basin.

Major sandstone unit in Sulaiman and Kirthar basins. Represents coastal to shallow marine conditions. Good petroleum reservoir.

Significance. A widespread Maastrichtian quartzose sandstone resting on the Fort Munro Formation (locally on the Parh Limestone); its clean, cross-bedded sands form a major regional petroleum reservoir and mark the terminal Cretaceous clastic influx into the Indus shelf.

Lithology
White, cream or brown, thick-bedded to massive, cross-bedded, medium- to coarse-grained quartzose sandstone with subordinate argillaceous limestone and shale.
Thickness
240–1,000 m (490 m at the Pab Range type section)
Type locality
West of Wirahab Nai, Pab Range
Environment
marginal marine, deltaic
Introduced by
Vredenburg (1909)
Economic importance
A major quartzose-sandstone hydrocarbon reservoir in the Lower Indus Basin.

Fossils

BivalvesGastropodsTrace fossils

References

  • Malkani, M.S. & Mahmood, Z. (2017). Stratigraphy of Pakistan. Geological Survey of Pakistan, Memoir Vol. 24.
  • Kazmi, A.H. & Jan, M.Q. (1997). Geology and Tectonics of Pakistan. Graphic Publishers, Karachi.

Reviewer confidence: high

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