SANDS OF TIME: INVESTIGATING THE BUNDELKHAND CRATON FROM DETRITAL ZIRCONS IN THE BETWA RIVER

The Archean Bundelkhand craton in northcentral India hosts numerous Proterozoic basins that preserve a geologic record spanning ~3.3 billion years (3700 Ma - 400 Ma) with documented lacunae, fossils and sedimentary structures that provide insight and evidence of past tectonomagmatic process and evolution. The SE-NW flowing Betwa River, a tributary of the Yamuna river, cuts through the center of the Bundelkhand craton. Sampling along the Betwa River therefore provides an opportunity to conduct a detailed geochronological survey of the craton that likely supplied detritus to the basins. The Bundelkhand craton can be subdivided into an (a) Archean granite-greenstone complex (~3.6–2.6 Ga); (b) Late Archean-Paleoproterozoic granitic plutons (~2.5–2.1 Ga) and; (c) Mafic dyke swarms and quartz-veins of Proterozoic age (Naqvi et al., 1957; Sarkar et al., 1984; Basu, 1986; Sharma and Rahman, 2000, Meert and Pandit, 2015). We present U-Pb and Lu-Hf analyses of detrital zircons from modern river sediments of the Betwa River collected from the Orchha basin dominated by the ~2.5 Ga Bundelkhand Granites and discuss the age spectra and its relationship to the sedimentary rocks in the Vindhyan basin.