THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



VOLUME LIX. 



No. XI.— NOVEMBER, 1922. 



ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 



An Outline of the Tertiary Geology of Burma. 



By L. Dudley Stamp, B.A., D.Sc, A.K.C., F.G.S. 

 Contents. 



I. Introduction. 



II. Physical Geography of Burma. 



III. The Pala?ogeography of the Tertiary Period in Burma. 



IV. The Tertiary Succession and its Classification. 

 V. Some Tectonic Considerations. 



VI. Correlation with Europe. 

 VII. Conclusion. 



I. Introduction. 

 Tj^OR more than a quarter of a century the Tertiary geology of 

 -*- Burma has been the subject of investigation from the point 

 of view of the petroleum resources of the country. A vast amount 

 of detailed information must be stored up in the private files of 

 the various oil companies operating in Burma, and it is a source 

 of continual regret to the geologist that at least some of this 

 information — much of which has great scientific but little com- 

 mercial value — cannot be made public. Although there exists 

 Dr. Noetling's important but misleading monograph on the supposed 

 '■ Miocene Fauna of Burma ", published in the Palwontographia 

 Tndica, 1901, it is only within the last decade that the Tertiary 

 stratigraphy has been seriously considered from a palaeontological 

 standpoint, and for this progress the officers of the Geological 

 Survey of India are almost entirely responsible. In this direction 

 immensely valuable results have already been obtained, though the 

 study is scarcely more than in its infancy. 



The object of the present paper is to bring together in the form 

 of a brief sunmiary the results of previously published investigation, 

 to fill in at least a few of the gaps by including the results of the 

 writer's observations in certain extensive areas in the Chindwin 

 Districts and elsewhere in Burma, but more especially to apply 

 certain important principles which have been deduced as a result 

 of the study of the Tertiary deposits of North- Western Europe. 

 A sunamary of these principles and their application to the classifica- 

 tion of the Eocene beds of the Anglo-Franco-Belgian Basin has 

 been published in the Geological Magazine.^ 



1 Stamp, Geol. Mag., Vol. LVIII, 1921, pp. 108-12. 



VOL. LIX. — NO. XI. 31 



