Chapter 16 Tectonics of the Cuddapah Basin and a model of its evolution: a review

Abstract

The Proterozoic Cuddapah Basin of south India is one of the most important Purana basins of Peninsular India. It hosts the Cuddapah Supergroup and the Kurnool Group of rocks. The structure of the Cuddapah Basin reveals that it forms the frontal part of a larger fold-thrust belt, named the Cuddapah fold-thrust belt (CFTB). The CFTB formed in response to the amalgamation of the Prince Charles Mountains-Rayner Complex of Antarctica with the Krishna province of India during the formation of the Rodinia Supercontinent. The CFTB, bounded by the Nellore-Khammam schist belt and Eastern Ghats terrane in the east and Peninsular Gneissic complex of the Dharwar Craton to the west, includes two frontal thrusts and foreland of an orogen. The frontal Nallamalai thrust structurally separates the basin into two blocks -the eastern Nallamalai fold belt and the western foreland. A model of evolution of the CFTB has been proposed. The CFTB, forming the front-most segment of a larger orogen associated with the intercratonic deformation related to the formation of the Rodinia Supercontinent, is the result of fault-propagation folding, forming an overturned anticline -syncline pair at the tip of the propagating Velikonda thrust which later cuts through the common limb of the fold pair.

Paleoproterozoic ($$\sim$$1.88–1.89 Ga) ultramafic–mafic sills, Cuddapah basin, India—revisited: Implications for interaction between mantle plume and metasomatized subcontinental lithospheric mantle

“…Among these Purana basins of the Indian peninsula, Cuddapah basin, occurring along the eastern margin of the Dharwar craton, is the second largest and the most studied Proterozoic basin (cf. Nagaraja Rao et al 1987;Patranabis-Deb et al 2012;Saha and Tripathy 2012;Matin 2015). The crescent shaped, easterly concave, N-S trending Cuddapah basin (extending over a length of about 450 km and a width of 200 km and covering an area of 44,500 km 2 ) comprises 6-12 km thick successions of sedimentary rocks, intercalated with igneous rocks (Kale 1991;Nagaraja Rao et al 1987; Ramakrishnan and Vaidyanadhan 2010).…”

“…The crescent shaped, easterly concave, N-S trending Cuddapah basin (extending over a length of about 450 km and a width of 200 km and covering an area of 44,500 km 2 ) comprises 6-12 km thick successions of sedimentary rocks, intercalated with igneous rocks (Kale 1991;Nagaraja Rao et al 1987; Ramakrishnan and Vaidyanadhan 2010). The Cuddapah Supergroup consists of unconformitybound successions of Papaghni, Chitravati and Nallamalai Groups and Srisailam Quartzite Formation (Nagaraja Rao et al 1987;Matin 2015) (see figure 1). Additionally, on the basis of sediment characteristics, spatial distribution and evolution of the basin through time, four sub-basins within the Cuddapah Basin, viz., Papaghni, Kurnool, Srisailam and Palnad sub-basins, have been identified (cf.…”

Geochemical characterization of the siliciclastic rocks of Chitravati Group, Cuddapah Supergroup: Implications for provenance and depositional environment

“…The crescent-shaped intra-cratonic Cuddapah basin extends for about 440 km in length along its eastern margin and 145 km diagonally in its widest part (Nagaraja Rao et al 1987). It is a foreland basin in front of the Eastern Ghat Mobile Belt (EGMB; Dasgupta et al 2005;Saha and Patranabis-Deb 2014;Matin 2015). Cuddapah sediments rest on the Archeans (∼2520 Ma; Jayananda et al 2008) and many of the schist belts also form basement (i.e., Veligallu, Kadiri, Penakacherla, Gadwal, etc., King 1872;Nagaraja Rao et al 1987; figure 1).…”

Chapter 1 Precambrian basins of India: stratigraphic and tectonic context

“…This craton thus displays both a widespread correlatable greenstone succession and accretionary greenstone belts which young eastwards (compare with Van Loon & De (2015) on the Singhbhum Craton greenstones), thus providing a possibly unique Archaean cratonic evolution on the global scale. Basin evolution related to tectonic shortening is also envisaged for the Proterozoic Cuddapah Basin, Cuddapah fold-thrust belt (CFTB) and the Kurnool Group succession (Matin 2015), thought to have been related to assembly of both Columbia (Cuddapah) and subsequent Rodinia (CFTB, Kurnool) supercontinents. Chakrabarti et al (2015) espouse a plume model for earliest Cuddapah Basin evolution; this may have preceded the convergent setting postulated by Matin (2015).…”

“…Basin evolution related to tectonic shortening is also envisaged for the Proterozoic Cuddapah Basin, Cuddapah fold-thrust belt (CFTB) and the Kurnool Group succession (Matin 2015), thought to have been related to assembly of both Columbia (Cuddapah) and subsequent Rodinia (CFTB, Kurnool) supercontinents. Chakrabarti et al (2015) espouse a plume model for earliest Cuddapah Basin evolution; this may have preceded the convergent setting postulated by Matin (2015). This once again emphasizes the inherent complexities in Precambrian basin interpretation and that most depositories had polyhistories rather than simple, single-component evolutions; simple allocation of any basin-fill succession to a specific standard model in any of the globally accepted basin classification schemes thus has its hazards and is seldom recommended by serious researchers (as also stated clearly by Allen et al (2015) in Chapter 2).…”