Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Murray Stuart (1919) agreed with Christie that the Salt Range Formation was a normal sedimentary deposit. According to Stuart, the salt deposits in the Salt Range and Kohat regions were both of early Cambrian or Precambrian age. In the Kohat region, the salt lies directly below the far younger “nummulitic” limestones, from the Eocene. Stuart explained this by proposing originally both the Kohat and Salt Range Formation salt deposits had been covered by Paleozoic and Mesozoic layers. At Kohat, an overthrust had stripped the Paleozoic and Mesozoic layers away, and then the Eocene limestones were deposited atop the Cambrian or Precambrian Kohat salt. But in the Salt Range Mountains the Cambrian or Precambrian salt deposits remained covered with Paleozoic and Mesozoic layers.

In 1920, E. H. Pascoe, in considering all the previous reports, came up with his own conclusion. The Salt Range Formation was a normal sedimentary deposit, of Tertiary (Eocene) age, as was the Kohat salt deposit. Pascoe also believed the Purple Sandstone overlying the Salt Range Formation to be Eocene. The position of the Salt Range Formation and the Purple Sandstone below other formations of Cambrian antiquity was attributed to a massive overthrust.

Robert Van Vleck Anderson (1927) gave the first report of botanical fossil remains from the Salt Range Formation. He noted the presence of “poorly preserved impressions of leaves of a Tertiary or, at earliest, Mesozoic type.” The impressions came from shale deposits at Khewra Gorge in the Salt Range. He gave samples to Dr. Ralph W. Chaney of the Carnegie Institution, who said: “This specimen clearly contains fragments of several specimens of dicotyledonous leaves. This places their age as not older than the Lower Cretaceous when the first dicots appeared. One of the leaves is very probably oak ( Quercus ) and its size and margin strongly suggest the Oligocene species Quercus clarnensis from western America. It is of interest to note that I found a closely related species in the Oligocene deposits of Manchuria. Your specimen is almost certainly of Tertiary age” (Anderson 1927, p. 672). From this evidence, Anderson argued for a Tertiary age for the Salt Range Formation as well as the Kohat Salt. The presence of Cambrian layers above the Salt Range Formation was attributed by him to an overthrust.

In 1928, Cyril S. Fox published a study concluding that both the Salt Range and Kohat salt deposits were early Cambrian or Precambrian. He saw no signs of an overthrust. He did not mention Anderson’s discoveries.

In his presidential address to the geology section of the Eighteenth Indian Science Congress, G. Cotter (1931, p. 296) disputed Anderson’s report of leaf impressions found in the Salt Range Formation. He noted that E. R. Gee had searched the same locality in January 1929 and found no new specimens. Cotter joined Gee for another search in March 1929 and also found no new specimens. Cotter noted that they found “carbonaceous markings, some of which simulated broad leaf impressions.” But they were in his opinion “not plant fossils.”

Anderson then sent to the Geological Survey of India office his best Quercus specimen. Cotter considered it “doubtful.” But Pascoe (1930, p. 25) said that the specimen had perhaps been damaged by friction during transit, making it “undeterminable.” Pascoe expressed a hope that the specimen had been photographed before it was shipped, but there is no record of such a photograph in Anderson’s reports. Some of Anderson’s specimens were sent to Professor B. Sahni at Oxford, who, according to Cotter, thought that “the specimens, if they were plants at all, were quite indeterminate.”

Cotter (1931, p. 299) also made this interesting observation: “About the year 1924 a large trunk of wood of a modern type and scarcely at all decomposed was found in the salt in the upper tunnel of the Khewra mine. Dr. Dunn, who examined this wood, states that the trunk was about

2 ft. in diameter, and that there were several branches associated with it of about 3 to 4 inches in diameter. Prof. Sahni regarded this wood as modern and resembling an Acacia now found growing in the Salt

Range.”

Cotter, after considering all arguments pro and con, said he favored a pre-Cambrian age for the Salt Range Formation (1931, p. 300). But before his paper expressing this view went to press, Cotter examined occurences of nummulites, fossil foramanifera typical of the Tertiary, discovered by E. R. Gee in the salt marl at Khewra. Cotter, who had originally thought they had been washed into the Salt Range Formation from younger deposits, decided they were native to the Salt Range Formation. In a footnote added to his paper before publication, Cotter (1931, p. 300) reversed the position stated in the paper and declared the Salt Range Formation to be Tertiary. But he regarded it as intrusive, which would explain its position beneath the Cambrian Purple Sandstone. According to Cotter (1933, p. 151), the plastic salt, of Eocene age, was somehow squeezed by geological pressure and other forces into an abnormal position.

Cotter (1933, p. 150) said that the Khewra nummulites discovered by Gee “occurred in association with plant fragments.” He further noted (Cotter 1933, pp. 150–151) that “plant fragments were also found by Mr. Gee in the Salt Marl at the Nila Wahan.” Pascoe (1959, p. 569) cited a 1933 report that at Kalra Wahan, a sample of salt marl “yielded not only carbonised stem fragments but also several small leaves of apparently dicotyledenous type.” Pascoe (1930, p. 132) also noted that Gee found a small piece of fossil wood in the reddish marls of the Salt Range Formation.

Gee (1934) gave his own opinion about the age of the Salt Range Formation, which he called “the Saline series.” He concluded that both it and the Kohat salt deposits were of the same Eocene age. The Kohat salt was in its normal position, but Gee (1934, p. 461) noted that “a very regular thrust of immense dimensions must be postulated in order to explain the present position of the Saline series beneath the early Paleozoics (or pre-Cambrian).” Concerning foramanifera found by him in Salt Range Formation deposits, he admitted that they might be derived from more recent formations (Gee 1934, p. 463; Fermor 1935, p. 64). But Gee (1934, p. 463) noted, “Plant fragments, however, have been found not only in beds of doubtful age but also in beds which are regarded as being definitely in situ in the Saline series.” He regarded this as evidence the Salt Range Formation was not Cambrian.

Some years later, B. Sahni, then a paleobotanist at the University of Lucknow, reported the existence of numerous plant microfossils in samples taken from the Salt Range Formation at the Khewra and Warcha salt mines. Previously, doubt had been cast on plant fossils from the Salt Range Formation. Critics, said Sahni (1944, p. 462), had pointed out that “in such a highly soluble and plastic substance as the Salt Marl, extraneous material might have penetrated through solution holes or have been enveloped during relatively modern earth movements.”

But deep within the mines, Sahni found deposits where such objections could not apply. The salt in these places ran in layers separated by thin layers of saline earth, locally called “kallar.” Sahni (1944, p. 462) noted that “the kallar lies closely interlaminated with the salt, in beds which run continuously for long distances and which, although visibly tilted, show no other visible signs of disturbance.”

According to Sahni, the salt layers accumulated from evaporation of sea water in coastal lagoons, whereas the kallar represented dust and dirt blown on to the drying salt by the wind. Sahni guessed that the kallar might contain pollen and other plant microfossils. When he examined specimens, he found this to be so (Sahni 1944, p. 462): “Every single piece has yielded microfossils. . . . The great majority are undeterminable as to genus and species, being mainly shreds of angiosperm wood, but there are also gymnosperm tracheids with large round bordered pits, and at least one good, winged, six-legged insect with compound eyes.” To Sahni, this meant that the Salt Range Formation must be Eocene rather than Cambrian. Sahni later found plant fragments not only in the kallar, but in associated solid rock layers composed of dolomite and shale.