"Research Highlights on the Evolution of Precambrian Crust of Peninsular India: Constraints from Recent Zircon U-Pb Geochronological Results"

Abstract

During the last quadrennial period, (2012-2016), many aspects of the Precambrian geology of the Indian peninsula were revisited by Indian geoscientists and their collaborators with the advantage of modern analytical techniques for geochronology as well as new perspectives on global geodynamics in space and time. Important contributions were made to the Archean and Proterozoic geological evolution of the Dharwar, Singhbhum, Bundelkhand and Bastar cratons, the granulite gneiss terrains, especially the Southern Granulite Terrain (SGT) and the Eastern Ghats Granulite Terrain (EGGT) and also the Proterozoic sedimentary Basins of peninsular India. Significantly, these studies have provided evidence for Paleo-to Eoarchean crustal remnants apart from placing precise age constraints on geological events. Most authors favoured the interpretation of Archean geodynamics in a plate tectonics conceptual framework for the assembly of Indian terranes in the supercontinent reconstructions, as reviewed on the basis of a short compilation of published research articles.

Cuddapah Basin, India: A Collage of Proterozoic Subbasins and Terranes

“…Based on this, they suggested that the Papaghni and Chitravati Groups were fed by detritus from the Dharwar craton and may have been deposited after 2.0 Ga. These and other detrital zircon ages have been used by workers to infer the 'maximum depositional age (MDA)' of the host sediments (e.g., Absar et al, 2016;Bhaskar Rao et al, 2016). It is necessary to recognize that this inference only ensures that the sediments are not 'older than the MDA' but does not provide any concrete evidence of the actual age of deposition.…”