Late Paleozoic Glaciation: Part VI, Asia
Occurrences of glacial deposits of late Paleozoic age in the Northern Hemisphere are known only in peninsular India, along the Himalayan trend from the Salt Range in Pakistan to Sikkim and Bhutan, and there are possible deposits rafted by shore ice in Siberia. The relatively thin glacial deposits of Pakistan and India are dated by microfloras and invertebrate faunas as being within the range Stephanian-Sakmarian. Deposition was from sizable although not enormous ice bodies scattered between the south-central peninsula and the shores of the Tethys Sea, somewhere near the present position of the Himalayas. Ice possibly reached the sea in the region of the Salt Range and in the Kumaon Himalayas. Rock paleomagnetism studies indicate that most of India and Pakistan would have been positioned at paleolatitudes between 40° and 50° S.; global temperatures thus probably were lower than at present. The rafted deposits of Siberia probably accumulated in paleolatitudes between about 50° and 60° N., and being Kazanian in age, they postdated most Gondwanaland tillite deposition (Westphalian to Sakmarian) but were approximately contemporaneous with ice-rafted deposits of southeastern Australia.