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An insight to the initiation of Cretaceous sedimentation in Northeast Indian Craton

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Abstract

The time transgressive Cretaceous sedimentation in northeast Indian craton is represented by the deposition of the Upper Cretaceous Mahadek sediments in Meghalaya. The Lower unit of these sediments is comprised of alternate sandstone and conglomerate horizons, and the Upper unit is composed of arkosic to sub-arkosic sandstones. These sediments are overlain by the calcareous litho-units of Langpar Formation of Cretaceous–Paleocene age. Lithofacies identified from various exposures and studied lithologs reflect a variation from marginal marine to marine depositional set-up in the Mahadek sediments. The Lower Mahadek facies is dominated by large-scale trough beds of medium to coarse-grained sediments which initiates with a conglomerate horizon succeeded by thin beds of shale and fine-grained sandstone with parallel laminations, which are followed by successive deposition of gritty sand and pebbly beds with coarsening upward sequence, suggesting product of delta plain in a marginal marine setting. Moreover, the bioturbated coaly fine-grained sandstone is further representative of tidal flat-tidal channel swamp formed in reducing condition and the trace fossil assemblages depict the channel fills. The Upper Mahadek facies is dominated by glauconitic-gritty fossiliferous sandstone showing fining upward sequence and hummocks, typical of marine environment. This fining upward sequence along with the vertical and lateral facies variation implies superimposition of retrograding shorelines on an earlier progradational alluvial fan sand complex. These different-scale cycles are interpreted as the sedimentary response to movements of the basin margin faults at variable frequencies, related to the contemporary faults. This depositional model of the Cretaceous sediments may further help in paleogeographic reconstruction of the northeast Indian craton during the Cretaceous period.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their deep sense of gratitude to the Addl. Director General & HOD, North-eastern Region, GSI, Shillong, Meghalaya for administrative support. They are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their critical review and the editor for constructive suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. North Eastern Region, Geological Survey of India, Shillong-3, Meghalaya, India

    Rohini Das, Tapan Pal & Bashab N. Mahanta

  2. Northern Region, Geological Survey of India, Lucknow-24, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Apoorve Bhardwaj

  3. Southern Region, Geological Survey of India, Hyderabad-68, Telangana, India

    Sampita Das Mitra

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  1. Rohini Das
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  2. Apoorve Bhardwaj
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  3. Sampita Das Mitra
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  4. Tapan Pal
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Contributions

RD: writing original draft, methodology, and software; AB: field data collection; SDM: field data collection; TP: visualization and conceptualization; BNM: writing original draft and conceptualization.

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Correspondence to Rohini Das.

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Communicated by M. V. Alves Martins.

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Das, R., Bhardwaj, A., Mitra, S.D. et al. An insight to the initiation of Cretaceous sedimentation in Northeast Indian Craton. J. Sediment. Environ. 5, 457–471 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43217-020-00028-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43217-020-00028-1

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