Pre-orogenic Cretaceous shelf sandstones at the northern and southern ends of the Sulaiman Range in west-central Pakistan show basically westward dispersal, which is off the craton. However, Paleocene marine sandstones in the south spread east-southeast, and early Eocene deltaic sandstones in the north spread southeast and north. These are mostly onto the craton, and indicate slope reversal of the Cretaceous shelf. Post-Oligocene fluvial molasse shows mostly southward drainage. A 3852 m section of molasse in the northern Sulaiman Range comprises a lower 2378 m of claystones and upwardly fining sandstones that represent meandering rivers and an upper 1474 m that are dominated by conglomerates that represent gravelly braided rivers. Paleocurrents in the lower, meandering, part of the section were generally southward, but very variable, whereas those in the upper, braided, part were more uniform and show eastward flow. A 3146 m section of molasse in the southern Sulaiman Range comprises (1) a basal 1160 m sequence of claystones and sandstones (meandering streams with very diverse flow directions, overall to the southwest), (2) a middle 1603 m sequence dominated by pebbly sandstone with large bedforms (big sandy braided rivers with less diverse flow to the southwest), and (3) an upper 383 m conglomeratic sequence (gravelly braided streams that still flow uniformly southwest). Rivers in the early molasse paralleled the modern Sulaiman Range in the north and flowed obliquely into it in the south, which suggests no uplift of the modern front of the range until the onset of modern transverse (eastward) drainage and the associated influx of conglomerates. In present and admittedly uncertain lithostratigraphic terms, uplift of the modern front of the range apparently began about 700 m lower in the north than in the south. The northern and southern molasse sections otherwise show broadly similar histories of river development. © 1990.
