- Source: Samana Suk Limestone
The Samana Suk Limestone is a Middle Jurassic geological formation in Pakistan, cropping out across the Salt Range from the western side.
It is believed that the formation was once a coastal environment due to the presence of dinosaur footprints and ammonites being found within close vicinity, with the deposition of the formation having occurred over three different depositional environments including open marine, lagoon, and beach settings.
Fossil content
Ammonites and belemnites are common within the Samana Suk Limestone. Indeterminate remains identified as Dinosauria indet. and Theropoda indet. were also identified from the formation.
= Dinosaur footprints
=A trackway of fifteen dinosaur footprints known as the Mianwali trackway was identified at Baroch Nala, Malakhel, near Mianwali in the Samana Suk Limestone by Muhammad Sadiq Malkani in 2006. He described the site in 2007 and the trackway contained four footprints of a megalosauroid ("Samanadrinda surghari") and eleven footprints of a sauropod ("Malakhelisaurus mianwali"). It is also the first trackway discovered in Asia which preserves wide-gauge trackways of sauropods.
Shortly after 2007, the trackway was partially destroyed by coal mining and road construction leading to the loss of all four theropod footprints. Hydraulic machinery later destroyed several of the sauropod footprints before 2011.