Paleozoic • Ordovician Literature

Misri Banda Quartzite

Ordovician (Tremadoc-Llandeilo)

Cited in 3 sources Last reviewed Aug 10, 2026

Unit summary

Rank: Not recorded
Status: Published
Age: Paleozoic · Ordovician · Early-Middle OrdovicianOrdovician (Tremadoc-Llandeilo)
Named by: Stauffer (1968); restricted by Pogue and Hussain (1986)
Type locality: Near Misri Banda, 10 km NE of Nowshera (34.017 N, 72.101 E).34.0172°N, 72.1014°E
Thickness: Not recorded
Lithology: Arenaceous and calcareous quartzite (fine- to medium-grained quartz with feldspar in a siliceous to calcareous matrix), cross-bedded and ripple-marked with vertical Skolithos burrows; dark-grey laminated argillite in the upper part.
Synonyms: Not recorded

An Ordovician shallow-marine quartzite of the Peshawar basin, full of Skolithos worm burrows and Cruziana trails.

The Misri Banda Quartzite is an Ordovician (Tremadoc-Llandeilo) quartzite of the Peshawar basin, lying between the Ambar Formation below and the Panjpir Formation above. Named by Stauffer (1968) and restricted by Pogue and Hussain (1986), it carries Cruziana rugosa trace fossils indicating an early-middle Ordovician age; the discontinuous cobble-pebble conglomerate at its unconformable top (below the Panjpir Formation) contains reworked late-Silurian conodonts. Its type section is near Misri Banda, 10 km NE of Nowshera, and it correlates with the quartzite member of the Abbottabad Formation in the Sherwan area.

Fossils

Cruziana rugosa (trace fossils)Skolithos burrows

Contacts

In the Hazara Basin column

MetamorphicIgneousLimestoneShale / mudFossils recordedContact not recorded

Band colour = period; texture = dominant rock type. Lines between bands mark the contact type; dotted = no contact recorded in the sources (not a claim of conformity). 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.

Distribution & setting

Hazara Basin

Basin: Not recorded
Region: Not recorded
Depositional environment: shallow marine
Coordinates: 34.0172°N, 72.1014°E

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See it in the field

Geoheritage site where this unit is exposed at outcrop.

Misri Banda Ordovician Quartzite

Khyber–Nowshera Belt

Correlation

Not recorded. Compare this unit against other basins on the correlation panel →

Economic significance

Not recorded

Remarks

A cross-bedded, Skolithos-bearing shallow-marine quartzite marking the Ordovician of the Peshawar basin; its Cruziana rugosa ichnofauna is among the first evidence of Ordovician rocks south of the Main Karakoram Thrust (Pogue, Harris & Hussain 1992; Hussain, DiPietro & Pogue 1998).

Research notes (1)

Field-by-field findings drawn from the cited literature. Every statement is traced to a registered source — follow a citation for the full reference.

Age & correlation (1)

Qasim et al. (2014): the Misri Banda Quartzite of the Peshawar basin — Ordovician by palaeontology but ~525 Ma by youngest detrital zircon — is lithologically similar to, and a possible equivalent of, the upper quartzite member of the Abbottabad Formation in the Sherwan (Hazara) area.

Qasim, M., Khan, M.A. & Haneef, M. (2014)

Sources (3)

Pogue, K.R., Harris, A.G. & Hussain, A. (1992). Paleozoic and Mesozoic stratigraphy of the Peshawar basin, Pakistan: Correlations and implications. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 104(8), 915-927.
Hussain, A., DiPietro, J.A. & Pogue, K.R. (1998). Stratigraphy and structure of the Peshawar basin, Pakistan. Journal of Nepal Geological Society, 18, 25-35.
Qasim, M., Khan, M.A. & Haneef, M. (2014). Stratigraphic characterization of the Early Cambrian Abbottabad Formation in the Sherwan area, Hazara region, N. Pakistan: Implications for Early Paleozoic stratigraphic correlation in NW Himalayas, Pakistan. Journal of Himalayan Earth Sciences, 47(1), 25-40.

Reviewer confidence: high

Every fact on this page is source-cited. This entry is part of the peer-archived Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991, CC‑BY‑4.0).

Lexicon status: Defined in journal or other literature; not found in a GSP memoir. There is no body currently ratifying unit status, so provenance is shown in place of a formal ruling.

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Cite this unit

APA

Qudsi, L. (2026). Misri Banda Quartzite. In Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991

BibTeX

@misc{stratigraphypk_misribandaquartzite,
  author    = {Qudsi, Lareb},
  title     = {{Misri Banda Quartzite} --- Pakistan Stratigraphy Dataset},
  year      = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi       = {10.5281/zenodo.21363991},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991}
}

Archived dataset: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21363991 (CC‑BY‑4.0) · Direct link to this entry: https://stratigraphy.pk/formation/misri-banda-quartzite (accessed October 29, 2026).

To cite the unit's original definition instead, see: Stauffer (1968); restricted by Pogue and Hussain (1986).

Below · older

Ambar Formation

Cambrian

Above · younger

Panjpir Formation

Ordovician–Silurian