Upper Dharamshala Fm

Nupur-1 Latitude: 32o 05' 47" N, Longitude: 76o07' 53" E. The top of the formation is at 2795 m and the bottom at 4115 m. The Upper Dharamshala is more sandy compared to Lower Dharamshala Fm. Upper Dharamshala are less disturbed and are characterized by the ridge forming sandstone in the outcrop

Starting with Jammu, the Upper Dharamshala is more sandy than the Lower Dharamshala Fm. Purple color still being dominant. The sandstones are thickly bedded. In Bilaspur, Upper Dharamsala consists of thick greenish sandstone with thin bands of greenish grey sandstone with thin bands of greenish grey clay. The Upper Dharamsala in Solan area is predominantly arenaceous with thicker sandstone beds. The thickness of Upper Dharamsala is around 1600 m in northwestern part of the basin. In the subsurface it is 1320 m thick in the type section. In Jwalamukhi-B and Balh-1 the thick ness is 1090 m and 1176 m respectively. Dharamshala are not developed east of Yamuna river (Rao, 1976). The presence of 417 m section (interval 4170 m to 4587 m) in well Mohand-1 as reported earlier seems to be a repetition of Lower Siwalik below a non emergent thrust.

This formation has not yielded any fossils except those of Dicotyledonous leaf impressions. The presence of Sabal major in the Kasauli beds was reported by Medlicott. Vertebrate fossil Dinotherir um pentapotamiae was reported from Jammu area (Rao, 1986). In the subsurface no fossil of any significance was found

The Dharamsala represents diachronous deposition on the feather edge of the foreland basin. Depositional environments comprised of semi-arid meander plain with sediment source from the rising but still distant proto-Himalayas to the north in which direction the Dharamshala foreland basin center was located. The Upper Dharmsala sediment was deposited in a mixed braided/anastomosing and possibly meandering fluvial system.