Red beds in the Kala Chitta Range of Attock District, west of Islamabad, where the story of how whales came out of the land was found. The Kuldana Formation is a thin tongue of river and estuary deposits, 20 to 120 m thick, laid down in a dry country between incursions of the sea, and its fossils are best known for the early cetaceans Indohyus, Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, with Attockicetus besides, animals that shed new light on the evolution of whales. The first fossil of Pakicetus, a fragment of skull, was found in 1981, and the genus is named for Pakistan, where all its fossils have come from. The beds also hold many early hoofed mammals, rodents and primates. Papers by Pilgrim in 1940 already described these rocks, then called the Chharat beds; Mir Abdul Latif named the Kuldana Formation in 1970.
Pakicetus, Ambulocetus and the first whales; early hoofed mammals, rodents and primates · Early to Middle Eocene, about 48 million years ago
This ground is protected. Photograph it, record it, leave it where it lies. On US federal land the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act 2009 makes collecting vertebrate fossils an offence, and penalties are real.
Pakistan
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