'THE GEOLOGY AND MINERAL RESOURCES OF DHUFAR PROVINCE, MUSCAT AND OMAN' [‎31r] (51/96)

37
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Cretaceous Series coloured argillaceous
strata.
Micaceous sandstone, of great thickness.
Low cliff be- Miliolite.
tween Marbat White shelly limestone, charged with
and Takah. Foraminifera, belonging to the Num-
mulitic Series.
68. Mr. Carter’s description continues from Takah and across
the Dhufar plain, with the ruins of El Balad, to Risut or Ras Resut
as he calls it (page 596) and on the next page he states, ‘. . . Here then,
we have compact white limestone raised up to form the ridge of the
promontory, while the Nummulitic Series is thinned out to the dark
brown limestone only, which remains in a horizontal line at its base.
Nothing, therefore, now can be more plain than that this white
compact limestone, which we have seen all along underlying the dark
brown limestone, is a part of the cretaceous series, or that of the great
white limestone series of the table-land . . . ’ From what has been
quoted it is clear that the only fossils that can be used for the corre
lation with the Cretaceous are those I have given in paragraph 66
and not as indicated in paragraph 65, unless there is some other
paper by Mr. Carter which refers to a subsequent visit. So, as
matters stand, the whole of the 1,400 feet of limestones seen in the
upper part of the scarp of Jabal Samhan, facing the Murbat pene
plain, belongs to one series. This series is determined by the fossils
found in the upper part of the limestones (summit of scarp). If
these are Cretaceous (Cenomanian) forms, the Samhan hills are capped
by strata of that age. If on the other hand the fossil evidence is
Eocene, then there are no Cretaceous rocks in Dhufar, as there is no
other fossil evidence from this province other than what I have given.
69. As already stated I found no fossils in the lower part of the
limestone scarp of Jabal Samhan, facing Murbat. The few fossils
I brought back from the Qarn Shaiba, to the north of the Jabal
Qara, from about Hanun and somewhat higher beds (which I was
inclined to correlate with those west-north-west of Risut on a
petrological similarity only), have been examined by Mr. P. N.
Mukerjee, M.Sc., Geological Survey of India, and he has kindly
identified them as follows:—
(1) Miliolite limestone from near Salalah contains Miliola
and numerous fragments of Pcctcfi, Cofius, etc., also
Macrocallista ci. agrestis (Cotter) and Cardium sub-
fragile (Bottger), both characteristic of the uppermost
Eocene (Yaw stage) of Burma ;