Sensitive High Resolution Ion MicroProbe (SHRIMP) U‐Pb dating of zircon from basement granite gneisses and nepheline syenites of the Sinapalli Nappe, occurring along the northwestern margin of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt, indicate high grade regional metamorphism and associated folding accompanying juxtaposition of the nappe with the Bhandara Craton, to have taken place between 617 ± 85 Ma (lower intercept age of a reworked basement unit) and 517 Ma (age of the youngest syenite). This shows, for the first time, that the final juxtaposition of the northwestern parts of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt against the Bhandara Craton came about in the late Neoproterozoic and not, as previously thought, during the Mesoproterozoic. The northwestern part of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt comprises a fold‐ thrust belt consisting of a stack of northwesterly verging nappes that have been thrust over the Bhandara Craton. The Sinapalli Nappe is the lowermost nappe and rests over a tectonic contact on the Archean granites and gneisses of the craton. The basal décollement is exposed as a two‐km‐wide ductile‐brittle thrust, hosting nepheline syenite plutons that show fabrics consistent with a synkinematic emplacement during thrusting. The Sinapalli Nappe is comprised of a sequence of alternating mafic granulites and quartzofeldspathic gneisses with slivers of basement granites, which are folded in three phases of folding (F1, F2 and F3) and were subjected to granulite facies metamorphism during F1 folding. Thrusting is synkinematic to F2 folding and is responsible for the juxtaposition of the northwestern part of the Eastern Ghats Terrane over the Bhandara Craton during the assembly of parts of eastern Gondwana.
Nepheline syenite plutons emplaced within the Terrane Boundary Shear Zone of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt west of Khariar in northwestern Orissa are marked by a well-developed magmatic fabric including magmatic foliation, mineral lineations, folds and S-C fabrics. The minerals in the plutons, namely microcline, orthoclase, albite, nepheline, hornblende, biotite and aegirine show, by and large, well-developed crystal faces and lack undulose extinction and dynamic recrystallization, suggesting a magmatic origin. The magmatic fabric of the plutons is concordant with a solid-state strain fabric of the surrounding mylonites that developed due to noncoaxial strain along the Terrane Boundary Shear Zone during thrusting of the Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt over the Bastar Craton. However, a small fraction of the minerals, more commonly from the periphery of the plutons, is overprinted by a solid state strain fabric similar to that of the host rock. This fabric is manifested by discrete shear fractures, along which the feldspars are deformed into ribbons, have undergone dynamic recrystallization and show undulose extinction and myrmekitic growth. The shear fractures and the magmatic foliations are mutually parallel to the C-fabric of the host mylonites. Coexistence of concordant solid state strain fabric and magmatic fabric has been interpreted as a transitional feature from magmatic state to subsolidus deformation of the plutons, while the nepheline syenite magma was solidifying from a crystal-melt mush state under a noncoaxial strain. This suggests the emplacement of the plutons synkinematic to thrusting along the Terrane Boundary Shear Zone. The isotopic data by earlier workers suggest emplacement of nepheline syenite at 1500 + 3/− 4 Ma, lending support for thrusting of the mobile belt over the craton around that time.
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