Pakistan Stratigraphy · stratigraphy.pk
Vitakri Formation
https://stratigraphy.pk/formation/vitakri-formation
Vitakri Formation
Late Cretaceous (latest Maastrichtian)
Cretaceous in the time scale →Stratigraphic position
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.
Pakistan's main dinosaur-bearing rock — a latest-Cretaceous land deposit in Balochistan rich in titanosaur and other dinosaur bones.
Continental formation hosting Pakistani dinosaurs and associated vertebrates. Deposited by paleo-Vitakri River in meandering fluvial and floodplain environments.
Significance. A latest Maastrichtian (~66 Ma) continental red-bed unit of the Vitakri Dome (Barkhan, Balochistan) and one of the few dinosaur-bearing formations of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent; it has yielded abundant Late Cretaceous titanosaurian sauropods, theropods, mesoeucrocodylians and pterosaurs, making it a key Gondwanan terrestrial vertebrate site.
- Lithology
- Variegated sandstone, mudstone, conglomerate
- Thickness
- 50-200 m
- Type locality
- Vitakri Dome, Barkhan District, Balochistan
- Environment
- continental, terrestrial
Fossils
Provinces
References
- Malkani, M.S. & Mahmood, Z. (2017). Stratigraphy of Pakistan. Geological Survey of Pakistan, Memoir Vol. 24.
Reviewer confidence: medium
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