The Chitarwata Formation is a geological formation in western Pakistan, made up of Oligocene and early Miocene terrestrial fluvial facies. The sediments were deposited in coastal depositional environments (estuarine, strandplain and tidal flats) when Pakistan was partly covered by the Tethys Ocean. Paleomagnetic data indicates an age range of around 28 to 17 million years ago, with its base in the Oligocene, and its upper boundary, where it meets the overlying Vihowa Formation, of the Early Miocene. Together with the Vihowa Formation, the Chitarwata Formation records the sedimentation of the Himalayan foreland basin during the collision of the Indian and Asian tectonic plates, the transition from marginal marine to fluvial environments, and the rise of the Himalayas.

Fossil content

The Chitarwata Formation has provided a wealth of terrestrial mammal fossils of the late Paleogene and early Neogene, or Tabenbulakian; the last of the Asian land mammal ages (ALMA). Among many others, the following fossils are reported from the formation:

Mammals

Artiodactyl

Anthracothere

Entelodonts

Giraffid

lophiomerycids

Ruminants

Perissodactyl

Paraceratheriidae

Rhinocerotidae

Marsupials

Rodents

Primates

Proboscidean

Reptiles

Fish