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The Cauvery-Palar basin is a major peri-cratonic rift basin located along the Eastern Continental Margin of India (ECMI) that had formed during the rift-drift events associated with the breakup of eastern Gondwanaland (mainly India-Sri Lanka-East Antarctica). In the present study, we carry out an integrated analysis of the potential field data across the basin to understand the crustal structure and the associated rift tectonics. The composite-magnetic anomaly map of the basin clearly shows the onshore-tooffshore structural continuity, and presence of several high-low trends related to either intrusive rocks or the faults. The Curie depth estimated from the spectral analysis of offshore magnetic anomaly data gave rise to 23 km in the offshore Cauvery-Palar basin. The 2D gravity and magnetic crustal models indicate several crustal blocks separated by major structures or faults, and the rift-related volcanic intrusive rocks that characterize the basin. The crustal models further reveal that the crust below southeast Indian shield margin is ∼36 km thick and thins down to as much as 13-16 km in the Ocean Continent Transition (OCT) region and increases to around 19-21 km towards deep oceanic areas of the basin. The faulted Moho geometry with maximum stretching in the Cauvery basin indicates shearing or low angle rifting at the time of breakup between India-Sri Lanka and the East Antarctica. However, the additional stretching observed in the Cauvery basin region could be ascribed to the subsequent rifting of Sri Lanka from India. The abnormal thinning of crust at the OCT is interpreted as the probable zone of emplaced Proto-Oceanic Crust (POC) rocks during the breakup. The derived crustal structure along with other geophysical data further reiterates sheared nature of the southern part of the ECMI.

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The earthquake of 21 May 2014 (Mw 6.0) in the northern Bay of Bengal (BOB) highlights the importance of studies on intraplate earthquakes in the oceanic regime for understanding the stress state of the oceanic lithosphere. The epicenter of the earthquake is located at a water depth of 2.5 km where the sediment thickness is nearly 12 km, and it occurs at a depth of *50 km within the upper mantle. Its location on the seismotectonic map of the region shows that the epicenter is far from the seismically active zone of the Burmese Arc in the east and low-to-moderately active seismic region of the east coast of India in the west. The fault plane solution of this earthquake indicates that it was a strike-slip event with a right-lateral sense of motion on a NW-oriented nodal plane, and it occurred on one of the NW-SE-trending fracture zones previously mapped in the BOB. Based on a compilation of long-term (1900-2011) intraplate earthquakes along with available focal mechanisms in the BOB and the adjoining east coast of India, we conclude the following: (1) the Precambrian structural trends, basin-scale faults and minor lineaments on the east coast of India are favorably reactivated in their offshore extensions up to the shelf-slope areas of the margin; (2) earthquake occurrences in the BOB region can be correlated with the fracture zone trends in the central BOB and along the Ninetyeast ridge or at the intersections of fracture zones with the subsurface trace of the 85°E ridge. The 21 May 2014 earthquake is the result of reactivation of such a NW-SE-trending fracture zone lying in the lithosphere of [100 Ma in age. Further evaluation of this event in light of the global occurrence of oceanic intraplate earthquakes in the older lithosphere ([80 Ma) suggests that such reactivation is possible in the high ambient stress state.

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SUMMARY:The oceanic lithosphere in the Bay of Bengal (BOB) formed 80 -120 Ma following the breakup of eastern Gondwanaland. Since its formation, it has been affected by the emplacement of two long N-S trending linear aseismic ridges (85 o E and Ninetyeast) and by the loading of ca.20-km of sediments of the Bengal Fan. Here, we present the results of a combined spatial and spectral domain analysis of residual geoid, bathymetry and gravity data constrained by seismic reflection and refraction data. Self-consistent geoid and gravity modeling defined by temperature-dependent mantle densities along a N-S transect in the BOB region revealed that the depth to the Lithosphere-Asthenosphere boundary (LAB) deepens steeply from 77 km in the south to 127 km in north, with the greater thickness being anomalously thick compared to the lithosphere of similar-age beneath the Pacific Ocean. The Geoid-Topography Ratio (GTR) analysis of the 85°E and Ninetyeast ridges indicate that they are compensated at shallow depths.

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