PERMIAN FOSSILS FROM THE EASTERN HIMALAYA*

Abstract

IN 1849, having traversed the igneous and metamorphic rocks of the Sikkim Himalaya, Joseph Hooker, discovered a limestone containing fragmentary organic remains. The fossils were thought to be nummulites, but afterwards they were shown to be crinoid ossicles of uncertain age. Fifty years later, E. J. Garwood found that the high range bordering Sikkim to the west of Hooker's locality was formed of thick, altered limestones containing crinoid remains, and he considered that these limestones, probably Silurian or Carboniferous in age, were the westward extension of Hooker's limestone. On the other hand, Henry Hayden, in 1907, mapped the rocks east and north of Hooker's locality and proved a sequence from Jurassic to Eocene ; he suggested that Hooker's limestone might be the equivalent of one of the Jurassic limestones found by him in southern Tibet.