Bheemaram Fm

Pranhita-Godavari Basin: Middle unit of the Maleri Stage of King (1881) was referred as the Bheemaram Sandstone (Sen Gupta, 1970), which was subsequently given the status of a formation and referred as the Bheemaram Formation after the town Bheemaram as was earlier suggested by Jain et al. (1964) and adopted by Kutty and Roy Chowdhury (1970) and Kutty et al. (1987). Original Publications: King, W. 1881. The geology of the Pranhita-Godavari valley. Mem. Geol. Surv, Ind., 18(30), 150-311; Sen Gupta, S. 1970. Gondwana sedimentation around Bheemaram (Bhimaram), PranhitaGodavari vaIIey, India. Jour. Sed. Pet., 40(1), 140-170; Jain, S.L., Robinson, P.L. and Roy Chowdhury, T.K., 1964. A new vertebrate fauna from the Triassic of the Deccan, India. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. Lond., 120 (1), no. 477, 115-124; Kutty, T.S. and Roy Chowdhury, T. W., 1970. The Gondwana sequence of the Pranhita Godavari valley, India and its vertebrate faunas. Proc. II Int. Gond. Symp., 1970, South Africa, 13, 303-308; Kutty, T.S., Jain, S.L., and Roy Chowdhury, T., 1987, Gondwana sequence of the northern Pranhita-Godavari Valley: its stratigraphy and vertebrate faunas. The Palaeobotanist, v. 36, pp. 214–219.]

[Figure 1: Geological map of the Pranhita-Godavari valley (after Kutty et al., 1987; Bandyopadhyay & Ray, 2020)]

Synonym: Bhimaran Formation

Sandstone. It chiefly comprises sandstone with red clay intercalations. The sandstone is coarse, poorly sorted, cross-bedded, yellowish-brown in color, and contains clay galls which are characteristically devoid of fossils (Sengupta, 1966, 1970; Chatterjee, 1967). The formation is about 600 m in northwest to about 900 m in southeast of the Pranhita-Godavari basin .

Fragmentary remains of temnospondyl amphibian and dicynodont reptile were reported (Kutty et al., 1987) from the otherwise unfossiliferous Bhimaram Formation.

Lithology, sand body geometry, primary structures and patterns of grain-slze distribution of these Gondwana rocks around Bheemaram are comparable to those of fluvial sediments. The coarser fractions of the rocks transported mainly by tractive currents, constituted point-bars and channel-bars of the river and the finer fractions were deposited from suspension in the interchannel floodplain areas (Sengupta, 1970).

References

Bandyopadhyay, S., and Sengupta, D.P., 1999, Middle Triassic vertebrate faunas from India. Journal of African Earth Sciences, 29, pp. 233–241. Bandyopadhyay, S., and Sengupta, D.P., 2006, Vertebrate faunal turnover during the Triassic Jurassic transition: an Indian scenario. In: Harris, J., Lucas, S.G., Spielmann, J.A., Lockley, M.G., Milner, A.R.C., and Kirkland, J.I. (Eds.), The Triassic - Jurassic Terrestrial Transition. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, 37, 77–85. Chatterjee, S. 1967. New discoveries contributing to the stratigraphy of the continental Triassic sediments of Pranhita-Godavary valley. Bull. Geol. Soc. Ind., 4(2), 37-41. Jain, S.L., Robinson, P.L. and Roy Chowdhury, T.K., 1964. A new vertebrate fauna from the Triassic of the Deccan, India. Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. Lond., 120 (1), no. 477, 115-124. King, W. 188 I. The geology of the Pranhita-Godavari valley. Mem. Geol. Surv, Ind., 18(30), 150-311. Kutty, T.S. and Roy Chowdhury, T. W., 1970. The Gondwana sequence of the Pranhita Godavari valley, India and its vertebrate faunas. Proc. II Int. Gond. Symp., 1970, South Africa, 13, 303-308. Kutty, T.S., Jain, S.L., and Roy Chowdhury, T., 1987, Gondwana sequence of the northern Pranhita-Godavari Valley: its stratigraphy and vertebrate faunas. The Palaeobotanist, 36, pp. 214–219. Sen Gupta, S. 1966. Palaeocurrent and depositional environments of the Gondwana rocks around Bheemaram-a preliminary study. BUll. Geol. Soc. Ind., 3(1), 5-8. Sen Gupta, S. 1970. Gondwana sedimentation around Bheemaram (Bhimaram), Pranhita-Godavari vaIIey, India. Jour. Sed. Pet., 40(1), 140-170.