2014 GSA Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia (19–22 October 2014)

Paper No. 27-6
Presentation Time: 9:15 AM

CONSTRAINTS ON THE PROTEROZOIC STRATIGRAPHIC ARCHITECTURE OF INDIA: INSIGHTS INTO REGIONAL TECTONICS AND PALEOENVIRONMENTAL EVOLUTION


MCKENZIE, N. Ryan1, HUGHES, Nigel C.2, MYROW, Paul M.3, SINGH, Birendra P.4, BANERJEE, Dhiraj M.5, JIANG, Ganqing6, PLANAVSKY, Noah J.7, DEB, Mihir5 and STOCKLI, Daniel F.8, (1)Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78752, (2)Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, (3)Department of Geology, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, (4)Center for Advanced Study in Geology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India, (5)Department of Geology, Delhi University, Delhi, 110007, (6)Department of Geoscience, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Pkwy, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4010, (7)Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, (8)Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712

The Indian subcontinent is blanketed by thick Proterozoic sedimentary successions that record vital information on regional tectonics and hold key insights into evolution of Earth’s surface system. However, these strata have been underappreciated due to a general lack of age constraints, which has led to disparate and controversial age designations for these units. Here we will present integrative detrital zircon U-Pb geochronologic, siliciclastic geochemical Sm-Nd, and carbonate chemostratigraphic (d13C) data derived from strata of the Himalayan, Aravalli, Ganga, and Vindhyan sectors of India. These data provide new depositional age constraints and a chronostratigraphic framework for these deposits. Broad regional correlations demonstrate striking shared similarities between these successions. A regional ~500 Myr unconformity exists between late Paleoproterozoic and late Mesoproterozoic aged strata across most of India. Prominent late Paleo-, late Meso-, and Neoproterozoic siliciclastic successions were deposited during intervals of convergent margin tectonism, and are all capped by coeval carbonate successions, with phosphatic stromatolites present in distinct late Paleoproterozoic deposits. Contemporaneous strata in all sectors yield similar age populations of detrital zircon grains, with similar stratigraphic variation in aged distributions, implying shared provenance. These data combined with facies analysis, suggests some of these strata were part of broad contiguous sedimentary systems with the Vindhyan sector representing more proximal epicontinental setting and the Aravalli-Himalaya sectors representing the distal continental margins. This interpretation contrasts classic widely held views that strata in all regions were deposited in a series of discrete isolated basins. Furthermore, our new age constraints present the controversial possibility that Aravalli strata may harbor a large late Paleoproterozoic positive carbonate d13C excursion.

Session No. 27

T239. Precambrian Sedimentology: From the Field to the Laboratory I
Sunday, 19 October 2014: 8:00 AM-12:00 PM
204 (Vancouver Convention Centre-West)
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 46, No. 6, p.88
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