DISTRIBUTION , CLASSIFICATION AND GEOLOGICAL

SUCCESION OF PALAEOZOIC ERA

Pavan Barot
M.Sc. 1
Roll No.- 1
Paper 409
Guided by : Dr. H. V. MAJETHIYA
 CONTENT
INTRODUCTION

THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD

THE ORDOVICIAN AND SILURIAN PERIOD

THE DEVONIAN PERIOD

THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD

THE PERMIAN PERIOD

INTRODUCTION:

•Started at about 542 M.Y and lasted for ~290 M.Y.

•Occupies ~6% of the total time of the life of the earth

•Provides better geological environment for coal formation which is the main source of
energy

•Suitable time for organic evolution (both flora and fauna)

•Rocks are less deformed and hence provide good sections for research

•In India, Paleozoic rocks occur mainly in the Himalayan region and that too most of them
in the Tethyan basin, extending from Kashmir in NW to Bhutan in the east. Apart from
this, grabens in peninsula too preserve Paleozoic rocks
DISTRIBUTION OF PALAEOZOIC IN INDIA:
Key Events Of Palaeozoic Era:
 THE CAMBRIAN PERIOD :
•541–485.4 million years ago.

•PRECAMBRIAN-CAMBRIAN BOUNDARY

•Precambrian-Cambrian boundary is marked by major biotic changes . These evidences are

used to correlate the terminal Proterozoic and Early Cambrian strata

•Nutrient Enriched Water mass (NEW) with high level dissolved phosphate and silica with
low level of oxygen left a clear imprint in fossil record in the Pc/C boundary

•Explosion of life in the Pc/C boundary saw variety of animals as builders, binders and
encrusters in various build-ups.

•Around 544 M. Y. ago during the Early Cambrian, there was an evolutionary explosion
occur known as “Cambrian Big Bang”
Salt Range :
The Salt Range is a hill system in the Punjab, deriving its name from its extensive deposits
of rock salt.
The range extends along the south of the Pothohar Plateau and the North of the Jhelum
River.
The Salt Range contains the great mines of Khewra, Kalabagh and Warcha which yield vast
supplies of salt.
Coal of a medium quality is also found.
Sakaser is the highest peak of Salt Range.
Order of superposition:

Salt- pseudomorph shale – bright red or green flaggy argillaceous beds

Magnesium Sandstone – Laminated white or cream coloured sandstone
Neobolus shale – grey shales with brachoipods, trilobites and gastropods.
purple sandstone - dark red sandstone with maroon coloured shale at base
Saline series – clay with vermilion colour and thin beds of dolomite.

Diamond-like salt crystals of the

Salt Range Formation and Khewra Billianwala
Sandstone exposed in the Khewra Gorge. Member, Salt Range Formation
Cambrian Life:
Plant Life

Acritarcha are unicellular micro phytoplankton of organic composition and with a known
life cycle is the first appearance of plant life in marine environments started at Precambrian
and continued to Recent.
Vascular plants appeared in Cambrian
For reasons unclear, 13 million years after the start of the Cambrian (so 530 my), there was
a tremendous diversification of marine life forms, some of which have never been
reproduced.
Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life accounts for events surrounding the Burgess Shale, the
most famous outcrop of the Cambrian explosion.
Other Cambrian life:

Trilobites – type of arthropod (“jointed feet”),

major predator, swimmer

Archaeocyathids – related to sponges

Inarticulate brachipods (“lamp shells”)

End of the Cambrian mass extinction got rid of

many trilobites and all archeocyaths; cause may
be the end of the Sauk transgression
 THE ORDOVICIAN AND SILURIAN PERIOD :
Ordovician -485 to 443 million years
Silurian -443 to 416 million years
It is difficult to separate the rocks of Ordovician and Silurian because:

1. Due to considerable thickness of unfossiliferous strata

2. Small quantity of fossils to distinguish
3. The cyclicity of sedimentation in rocks of both ages
So there are no means by which the rocks of these two different rocks can be separated
and hence are clubbed together

Jammu & Kashmir Region:

In Jammu and Kashmir, Ordovician and Silurian rocks are exposed in Doda, Poonch,
Anantnag and Baramulla districts.

Rocks are represented by slate, phyllite etc.

In Shans Abria syncline, a large exposure of variegated slate with numerous distorted,
crushed and obliterated fossils is found overlying the blue clay of Cambrian age.
Takche Formation:

Takche Formation is rich in carbonate and is easily distinguishable from distance by its
brown colour
Small transgressive sills of dolerite composition are intruded into the Takche Formation.
The rocks of the Takche Formation are represented by Sandstone to shale to limestone to
dolomite with a lot of facies changes in between giving rise to mudstone, packstone,
floatstone etc. Besides these there have been considerable reef build-ups by corals,
stromatopods and solenoporoids.

Acadian-Caledonian orogeny:

At the end of the Silurian, the Tippecanoe

transgression comes to an end due to the accretion of
the Avalonia terrane to eastern North America
(Laurentia) Called the Acadian orogeny in North
America, it’s responsible for much of the northern
Appalachian upliftment.

In Britain, called the Caledonian orogeny (Scottish

highlands).
Ordovician life:

Graptolites (Graptolithnia) are creatures that

made their first appearance in the Cambrian but
are considered index fossils of the Ordovician

Look like “Rock Writing” , hence their name

Are hemichordates!

1st vertebrates - jawless fish (filter feeders)

The vertebrate protects the spinal cord, which

carries signals from the brain throughout the
body.

They extinct during Carboniferous

Silurian life:

 1st jawed fish, which later evolved into sharks.

 Ozone (O3) layer formed which blocks harmful UV radiation so, life evolve on land.

 1st land plants (mosses & ferns) followed by 1st land animals (arthropods-spiders &
scorpions).
 THE DEVONIAN PERIOD :
416 million years to 359 million years
 The characteristic litho unit of this age is Muth Quartzite, which is white colour, hard
and compact and can be easily distinguished from areal photograph. It extends from
Kashmir valley to Kumayun.

Jammu and Kashmir region:

 Muth Quartzite is the marker horizon and occurs repeatedly due to folding.
 Rare plant remains are reported from this litho unit. Pre-Devonian plant life is recorded
in India.

Himachal Pradesh region:

 The Muth Quartzite rests on Takche Formation sharply indicating a break in
sedimentation in Spiti area. In Spiti area it is more or less uniform thickness.

At some places, olive green shales and conglomerates are associated with it along minor
amount of dolomites.
The lipak series:
 The muth quartzite is overlain by a thick series of limestone and quartzite more than 600
m. in thickness.
 The limestone are hard, dark coloured and splintery.
 This series is known as Lipak Series. It form a typical outcrop in the lipak valley in the
eastern part of spiti.

The po series:
The lipak series is succeeded , in the same continuous sequence by a group of dark
coloured shales and quartzite , which is known as Po Series.
The lower division is for the most part composed of black shales, traversed by intrusive
dykes ad sheets of dolerite.
Continents of The Devonian: During the Devonian there were important changes in
the land masses on the globe.
 North America and Europe had collided forming a large continent called Euramerica.
This caused the formation of the Appalachian Mountain Range.
These two large land masses lay close to one another near the equator.
The two continents were moving toward each other throughout the Devonian Period.
The waterway between the two continents covered a subduction zone. This is an area
where one plate is moving underneath the other.
Eventually this would mean that the two continents would collide to form the
supercontinent Pangea in the Permian Period. That event is more than 64 million years
after the Devonian Period.

The Age of Fishes:

It is famous for the thousands of species of fish that developed in Devonian seas. When fish
first started to develop, they had no jaws .
This material doesn’t fossilize well, so the earliest fossils were of fish whose outside skin
was protected by scales and plates made of boney tissue. These fish were called
Ostracoderms. Their name means “shell-skins.”
These animals appear in rock from the late Silurian and early Devonian periods.
Ancient Sharks:
Sharks first appear in the middle Devonian period.

The Bony Fish:

The bony fish appear during the middle Devonian Period.
The first of these are the lobe-fins. The lobes contain
jointed bones. These lobe-fins are thought to have
evolved into “legs” and eventually into amphibians that
spend their lives both in and out of the water.

The Reef Builders

The work of the sponges and corals went on through the Devonian Period. They built some
of the largest reefs in the world. Invertebrates grew well in Devonian seas too, so many new
species developed.

Mass Extinction Ends The Devonian Period

Species had begun to branch out and include both land and water habitats. The Devonian
Period ended with a mass extinction. The Devonian extinction hurt the water habits much
more than those on land. The sponges and corals were the most affected. No major reef
building happened again for thousands of years.
 THE CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD :
359 million to 299 million years
The carboniferous era divide into two subperoid: 1. Mississippian 2. Pennsylvanian.
In some part of the world, Carboniferous is represented by both terrestrial and marine
sediments, some of them are rich in coal seams.
Marine sediments are confined in the Himalayan region in J & K, Spiti-Zanskar-Kinnaur in
HP, Kumaun in Uttarakhand.
The Upper carboniferous sediments are also preserved in Peninsular India and forms the
base of the Gondwana Supergroup.
Glaciation was initiated in the Upper Carboniferous. Towards Lower Carboniferous, there
was marine transgression in Peninsular India and hence intercalation of marine sediments
with Gondwana sediments. This gives a clear evidence of paleogeography of Peninsular
India
The Aryan Era:

Upper Carboniferous to the Recent.

The era following the middle carboniferous was of great earth- movements, the
Hercynian, both in central Asia and N. India.
The sedimentation was interrupted in the various areas of deposition
The disribution of land and sea was readjusted

Gondwana System:
They are deposits laid down in synclinal troughs on ancient plateau surface.
As the sediments accumulated, the loaded troughs subsided.
Fresh water and sediments accumulated in these trough and terrestrial plants and animals
thrived.
This happened since Permian period (250 million years ago).

Gondwana Coal:
Gondwana rocks contain nearly 98 per cent of India’s coal reserves.
Gondwana coal is much younger than the Carboniferous coal and hence it’s carbon
content is low.
They have rich deposits of iron ore, copper, uranium and antimony also.
Sandstones, slates and conglomerates are used as building materials.
Carboniferous Life:
Brachiopods {products,Athyris, Syringothyris}, lamellibranchis , Trilobites.
There were Tropical swamps which later form coal deposits.
Amphibians & insects dominate and become large
[dragon flies-1m wing span; cockroaches-10 cm long.]
1st reptiles appeared in carboniferous.
 THE PERMIAN PERIOD :
The fusion of land masses reduced the
amount of humid coastline and increased
the extent of dry inland areas.

This favoured the amniote radiations

over "amphibian".

The conglomerate layers belonging to up.

Carboniferous and Permian, rests over the
po series, but at other places it lies over
the beds of Silurian and carboniferous.

This conglomerate has been stated as

“Reference Line” , it divides the
fossiliferous system of India into two
major parts : Dravidian and Arayan
Permian Life:

 During the Permian a number of animal groups became extinct, including the trilobites,
tabulate and rugose corals, and blastoids.

 Amphibians and reptiles continued to be the dominant land animals and

gymnosperms replaced ferns, club mosses and horsetails as the dominant plants.

Early Permian reptiles, Cacops in front The middle Permian reptile, Anteosaurus.
& Casea in back.
Permian–Triassic Extinction Event:

90% to 95% of marine species

became extinct,
70% of all land organisms.
Recovery from this event took 30 million
years [on land].
Trilobites, which were dominant
since Cambrian times, became extinct
before the end of the Permian.
Nautiluses, a species of cephalopods,
surprisingly survived this occurrence.

Causes:

Temperature crises
Extensive Volcanism
Meteorites
Population
 References:
Geology Of India By Dr. D N Wadia

www.fossilmuseum.net

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

www.geosocindia.org

www.usgs.gov