Paleozoic • Devonian formation GSP memoir

Warran Ghundai Formation

Late Devonian (?late Famennian)

Northern Indus Suture

Devonian in the time scale →

Cited in 3 sources Last reviewed Jul 31, 2026

Unit summary

Rank: formation
Status: Under review
Age: Paleozoic · DevonianLate Devonian (?late Famennian)
Named by: Not recorded
Type locality: Not recorded
Thickness: Not recorded
Lithology: Slate, phyllite, quartzite and dolomitic limestone.
Synonyms: Not recorded

A slate-phyllite-quartzite-dolomite unit of the Nowshera/Peshawar area.

Fossils

Not recorded

Contacts

In the Khyber–Nowshera Belt column

LimestoneMetamorphicFossils 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

Khyber–Nowshera Belt

Basin: Northern Indus Suture
Region: Not recorded
Depositional environment: marine
Coordinates: Not recorded

Correlation

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

Economic significance

Not recorded

Remarks

A slate-phyllite-quartzite-and-dolomitic-limestone unit of the Nowshera/Peshawar Paleozoic area.

Research notes (2)

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 (2)

Molloy, Talent & Mawson (1997): a spot sample of crinoidal limestone overlying the main limestone development near Gundhai Sar — 'perhaps from the Warran Ghundai Formation of Khan (1970)' — was reported by Pogue et al. (1992, tab. 1, no. 22) to yield conodonts indicative of the late Famennian expansa Zone, coeval with part of the Ali Masjid sequence at Misri Khel. Period gap-filled to Devonian on this (tentative) attribution; the identification of the sampled horizon with the Warran Ghundai Formation is not certain and bed-by-bed conodont sampling at Gundhai Sar is still needed.

Molloy, P.D., Talent, J.A. & Mawson, R. (1997)
Kazmi & Abbasi (2008) DUPLICATE FLAG: the book treats the 'Warren Ghundai Formation' of Khan M.A. (1970) as a junior synonym of the Lowara Mena Formation (Ghundai Sar area, Khyber; Late Devonian–Carboniferous phyllite/limestone), with the senior name Lowara Mena taking precedence. This record and 'lowara-mena-formation' are therefore likely the same unit and should be merged/reconciled. (Consistent with the late Famennian expansa-Zone conodonts reported near Gundhai Sar by Pogue et al. 1992 / Molloy et al. 1997.)

Kazmi, A.H. & Abbasi, I.A. (2008)

Sources (3)

Malkani, M.S. & Mahmood, Z. (2017). Stratigraphy of Pakistan. Geological Survey of Pakistan, Memoir Vol. 24.
Molloy, P.D., Talent, J.A. & Mawson, R. (1997). Late Devonian-Tournaisian conodonts from the eastern Khyber region, north-west Pakistan. Rivista Italiana di Paleontologia e Stratigrafia, 103(2), 123-148.
Kazmi, A.H. & Abbasi, I.A. (2008). Stratigraphy and Historical Geology of Pakistan. Department & National Centre of Excellence in Geology, University of Peshawar, Peshawar. 524 pp. ISBN 978-969-9119.

Reviewer confidence: medium

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: Appears in a single-author Geological Survey of Pakistan memoir (Malkani & Mahmood 2017), not cross-confirmed against the Shah lexicon. The Stratigraphic Committee of Pakistan is largely inactive, so documented provenance — not formal ratification — is the available signal.

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Cite this unit

APA

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

BibTeX

@misc{stratigraphypk_warranghundaiformation,
  author    = {Qudsi, Lareb},
  title     = {{Warran Ghundai Formation} --- 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/warran-ghundai-formation (accessed October 29, 2026).