Eastern Ghats- The New Kid On The Block

We who live in the Deccan Volcanic Province in and near about the Western Ghats generally look down upon the Eastern Ghats. Call them the poor man's mountains. Point out that the Eastern ranges have a more gentle topographic profile than the Western ranges. We smirk at the lack of spectacular escarpments, narrow gorges and the mesas and pinnacles.

But, when it comes to geology, the Eastern Ghats more than holds its own. In fact, it has a much more complicated and interesting geologic history than the Western Ghats, at least the Deccan Volcanic part of the Western Ghats.

The Deccan Volcanic part of the Western Ghats is an elevated plateau which formed by the piling up of lava 66 million years ago and which since has been dissected by rivers, forming gorges, narrow valleys, and high relief. The edge of this plateau is the Western Ghat escarpment. The Eastern Ghats on the other hand is an ancient orogenic belt which formed by the collision between crustal blocks, resulting in the formation of fold mountains.

The map below shows the broad geology of the Eastern Ghat with the inset showing its location within the Indian continent.

Source: Relative Chronology in High-Grade Crystalline Terrain of the Eastern Ghats, India: New Insights: Samarendra Bhattacharya, Rajib Kar, Amit Kumar Saw, Prasanta Das 2011.

The Eastern Ghats is a Late Archean to Proterozoic age crustal block that has evolved through long and multiple episodes of magmatism, metamorphism and deformation.  It contains rocks ranging in age from 2. 9 billion years to 900 million years old. The rocks have some of the coolest names in petrology; charnockites and enderbites, khondalites, anorthosites and syenites along with granitic rocks and  sedimentary rocks like quartzites. Charnockites (and enderbites) and khondalites are granulite grade metamorphic rocks, i.e. they formed at very high temperatures of around 900-950 deg C by transformation of older igneous and sedimentary rocks respectively. Anorthosite is an igneous rock made up almost entirely of plagioclase feldspar. Syenite is also an igneous rock containing potassium and sodium rich feldspars with no or little quartz.

The interesting part is that the Eastern Ghat block was not part of India when these rocks formed. It may have been an independent block in the Archean (more than 2. 5 billion years ago), but at some point it became part of a larger block that is now the Antarctic continent. This region then underwent magmatism around 1.7-1.6 billion years ago, an episode of granulite metamorphism around 1.6 billion years ago in its southern regions, followed by sedimentary basin formation around 1.3 to 1.2 billion years ago. These sediments were then buried, intruded by magmas like syenites,  and subjected to another episode of granulite grade metamorphism around 1.2 to 1 billion years ago. This last episode of metamorphism and deformation was a result of continental movements and collisions related to the formation of the Rodinia Supercontinent.

When did the Eastern Ghats become part of India? Geologists have timed that event to around 500 million years ago, part of the assembly of Gondwanaland.

How did they figure that out? When the Eastern Ghat terrain collided with India in the Bastar region, it caused the Baster region crust to be buried to great depths resulting in the partial melting of that crust. Radiogenic dating of minerals titanite and zircon, which formed in these new melts, give an age of around 500 million years to this melting event.

I love it when these big ideas are depicted in simple and clean diagrams. Below is a graphic that shows the separation of the Eastern Ghat terrain from its conjugate Antarctica block called the Rayner Complex.

Source: Eastern Ghats Province (India)–Rayner Complex (Antarctica) accretion: Timing the event- Pritam Nasipuri, F. Corfu, and A. Bhattacharya 2018

Two scenarios are shown. The upper panel shows a composite Eastern Ghat Province-Rayner Complex colliding with the Greater Indian landmass around 500 million years ago, followed by a breaking away of the Rayner Complex. The lower panel shows that the Eastern Ghat Province had broken away from the Rayner Complex by 800 million years ago. It then collided with India around 500 million years ago.

The Indian continent was put together by the collision and welding of several smaller continental blocks, namely Dharwar, Aravalli, Bundelkhand, Bastar and Singbhum. This assembly took place between 2 billion and 1 billion years ago.

The Eastern Ghat block was the last to join India. As recent work suggests, as late as 500 million years ago.

The Bay Of Bengal Once Touched Sikkim

See this satellite imagery of the Himalaya.  The Indian State of Sikkim occupies the region just east of Darjeeling.

The Siwaliks (green arrows) appear as a forested linear band forming the southernmost hilly terrain of the Himalaya. The hills abut against broad alluvial plains. Rivers traversing the Himalaya carrying enormous sediment load encounter a gentler gradient upon exiting the hilly terrain. A loss of stream power results in sediment being dumped in the channel, so much so, that rivers get chocked on their own sediment. As a result, channels split and bifurcate forming a braided river system. These rivers  also suddenly change course, abandoning their channel and carving out new ones. Such course changes may occur during floods or by tilting of the land by structural movements.  Over time, the deposits of these ever changing rivers coalesce to form cone shape aprons of sediments known as alluvial fans. These rivers like the Kosi and the Tista, which flow transverse to the mountain range, meet an axial river like the Ganga and the Brahmaputra flowing parallel to the mountain front. The axial river flows into the Bay of Bengal.

The Siwalik hills were once these type of alluvial fans.  Just as today, during Miocene and Pliocene times, sediment was being deposited in front of the rising Himalayan mountains. Beginning about half a million years ago or so, these ancient alluvial fans were crumpled up and uplifted to form the Siwalik ranges. Active alluvial fan formation shifted southwards to its present locus. This process continues. In a few million years, the present day alluvial fans deposited by rivers like the Kosi and the Teesta will be deformed into a newer mountain range south of the Siwaliks. The Himalaya are growing southwards.

How do we know that the Siwaliks were once alluvial fans? Geologists rely on analogy, comparing the Siwalik sediments with what is accumulating in the present day alluvial fans. They find a striking similarity. Siwaliks are made up of alternations of coarse gravel layers and finer sand and silt layers with characteristic bed orientations and structures like cross beds and rippled sand. The gravel layers are inferred to be the river channel deposits while the finer sand and silt layers are the river bank, levee and floodplain deposits. An important finding made throughout the length of the Siwalik ranges has been the paleo-current directions preserved in the rocks.  Geologists have measured the orientation of bedding and ripple marks and found out that rivers were flowing south and south east i.e. perpendicular to the mountain chain. There is no evidence of an axial river like the Ganga in these Siwalik sediments. The thinking is that such an axial river must have flowed much to the south of the region of deposition of Siwalik sediments.

And what about evidence of a delta? Where did these Miocene and Pliocene rivers meet the sea? The logical geographic place to look for a coast would be towards the east. And in fact, that evidence has come from the Siwalik sediments of West Bengal and Sikkim. In a really interesting paper published recently in Current Science, Suchana Taral, Nandini Kar and Tapan Chakraborty describe sedimentary structures and marine trace fossils from Middle Siwalik sediments exposed along the Gish River and its tributaries in the Tista Valley. Siwalik rocks in the central and western part of the Himalaya show current structures that indicate south flowing rivers. In this easterly location however, the sediments show evidence of being deposited in a wave influenced environment. Sedimentary structures like wave ripple laminations and hummocky-swaley stratification indicate deposition in wave dominated marine bay.  Paleo-current indicators like ripple marks preserved on sandstone surfaces show a south as well as north directed current. This suggests an environment influenced by tides and north directed waves. Associated sediments show indicators of different delta environments like distributary channels, delta mouth bar and delta flood plain deposits.

Apart from current direction indicators, the sediments contain plant fossils indicative of mangrove vegetation and brackish water environments. They also contain trace fossils i.e. impressions and burrows made by creatures moving and disturbing the sediment surface. Cylindrichnus, Chondrites, Rosselia, Taenidium, Skolithos, Planolites are some of trace fossils reported in this study. The assemblage of trace fossils is similar to those reported from marine settings.

All this suggests that during the time of deposition of these Middle Siwalik sediments in Late Miocene-Pliocene times, about 5-10 million years ago, a branch of the Bay of Bengal had invaded as far north as present day Sikkim. Rivers carrying sediment from the Himalaya were debouching them in a delta and a shallow marine bay. The Sikkim Middle Siwalik strata are ancient deformed delta and marine deposits.  

A paleo-geographic reconstruction of this eastern part of these Siwalik depositional environments in shown below.

 Source: Suchana Taral, Nandini Kar and Tapan Chakraborty 2017

The  upper graphic shows the reconstructed delta and marine depositional environment. The lower graphic shows the regional paleo-geography. The pin shows the environmental location of the study area. The yellow rose diagram shows the paleocurrent directions measured in the Siwalik sediments.

Interestingly, some earlier work by geologists has shown that in Late Miocene times the Brahmaputra was flowing along a much more easterly route towards the Bay of Bengal. They used sand thickness and sand/shale ratios from wells drilled in the delta and found lobate sand bodies, which they inferred were brought in by a large river flowing from a ENE source. Their interpretation is shown in the graphic to the left (Uddin A. and Lundberg N. 1998). At the time the Shillong Plateau did not exist. The river flowed into the Bay of Bengal from the Upper Assam valley and through the Sylhet depression in to the Bengal Basin. The uplift of the Shillong Plateau in Pleistocene times forced the Brahmaputra to turn west and wrap itself around the newly emerging uplands.

Since Pliocene times, the tremendous amount of sediment being delivered by Himalayan rivers, coupled with Pleistocene sea level fall, has caused a retreat of this arm of the Bay of Bengal southwards.

In the satellite image below, based on the location of the Sikkim Siwalik deposits and other work on the Bengal Basin paleogeography, I have drawn in brown the coastline as it would have existed 5-10 million years ago. The ancient drainage systems are shown in blue. South directed arrows shows the extent of the growth of the Bengal/Bangladesh alluvial plains and delta and the retreat of the sea since then to its present location.

Pretty amazing finding.

Exploring India's Paleogeography And Fossils Using The Paleobiology Database Navigator

I was directed to the Paleobiology Navigator by a tweet from @avinashtn .

Great fun! The Paleobiology Database is being maintained by an international non-governmental group of paleontologists. Contributing members add to it fossil occurrences from scientific publications.  The Paleobiology Database Navigator is a web mapping application managed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison that allows you to explore the geographic context of these fossil locations. You can filter the data based on age, taxonomy and geography. You can also generate diversity trends for the selected set.

I played around a bit with India specific fossil locations.

Paleozoic versus Mesozoic Basins

The figure below shows the distribution of fossil localities for the Paleozoic Era. India is shown as it is today and in its Paleozoic geography.

Source: Paleobiology Navigator

You can clearly see that fossils in Peninsular India are predominantly located in one narrow band in the center and east of the country. These are the Permian Gondwana basins. They are, starting from the westernmost and going eastwards, Satpura Basin, Son Valley Basin, Damodar Valley Basin and the Ranjganj Basin.  These are continental interior basins comprising river, lake and swamp environments. Most of India's coal deposits come from these basins. These basins are rich in plant fossils, and reptile and amphibians remains.

Now take a look at India's geographic position (arrow) during the Permian (298-252 million years ago). Peninsular India occupies an interior location within Gondwanaland, far away from any ocean. Tectonic stability through most of the Paleozoic meant lack of crustal movements. During this time, peninsular India was an erosional landscape until the Permian basin formation in the east.

The one Paleozoic fossil location in Rajasthan shown here represents early Permian marine sediments formed by the flooding of the western region by an arm of the Tethys sea.

And this database has still not added one important fossil location. This is the early Cambrian age locality near Jodhpur where sediments of the Nagaur Group are exposed. They contain trilobite trace fossils.  No basin development and sedimentation took place in Peninsular India from Mid-Cambrian to Permian times (530 million years to 298 million years). 

In contrast, look at the northern edge of India, where the Himalaya stand today. That margin was submerged under the Tethyan ocean. A thick pile of marine sediment accumulated right through the Paleozoic, forming the fossil rich Tethyan Sedimenary Sequence of the Himalaya.

Continental configurations changed in the Mesozoic (252 million to 66 million years ago). The figure below shows Mesozoic fossil locations and the Cretaceous paleogeography of India.

Source: Paleobiology Navigator

There is now a wide swath of fossil localities across Peninsular India. The dotted lines trace important linear depressions where sediments were deposited. The east west oriented Narmada rift zone (NRZ; Jurassic and Cretaceous) and the NW-SE oriented Pranhita Godavari zone (PGR; Triassic to Cretaceous) are important fossil repositories.  The eastern India basins continued accumulating sediment. To the west are the basins which formed in Gujarat and Rajasthan (Jurassic and Cretaceous). The Kutch rift (KR) is outline by dotted lines. And to the south east in Tamil Nadu, marine flooding of the eastern continental margin in the Cretaceous resulted in the deposition of richly fossiliferous sedimentary sequences.

All these basins ultimately owe their origin to the forces exerted on the crust as India pulled away (arrow) from Gondwanaland.  Seaways formed along these rifts and crustal depressions. The Mesozoic, especially the Jurassic and Cretaceous, was a time of global high sea levels. The western margin saw marine incursions from the nascent Indian Ocean, while the eastern margin was submerged by the waters of the newly formed Bay of Bengal.  River and lake systems also developed in more continental interior locations. The northern margin (Himalaya) was mostly a marine environment through the Mesozoic.

Marine versus Continental Interior Basins in Mesozoic Central India

The distribution of terrestrial organisms versus marine organisms can tell us about the extent of marine flooding into Peninsular Central India in the Mesozoic.

I created these maps by using localities of dinosaur fossils (above) to map the distribution of terrestrial sedimentary environments. I used localities of invertebrate marine organisms, namely,  brachiopods, echinoderms and ammonoids  to delimit the extent of marine environments along the Central Indian basins (below).

 Source: Paleobiology Navigator

You can see that terrestrial environments were present right across the Narmada rift zone, the Pranhita Godavari rift basin and in the western Indian basins also. In the western basins, some of the dinosaur fossils have been found in marginal marine settings comprising coastal and estuarine environments.

Deeper water marine environments as evidenced by brachiopod, echinoderm and ammonoid localities are however restricted to Gujarat, Rajasthan and western Madhya Pradesh. The Cretaceous Bagh Beds in Madhya Pradesh is the eastern most limit of Mesozoic marine flooding into Central India. Seaways did not extend into eastern parts of the Narmada rift basins.

Global and Indian Dinosaur Diversity Patterns

I used the Stats tool to create graphs of dinosaur diversity. The number of Genus per Stage is being used as a measure of diversity. Geologic time is subdivided in to bins. An Age is a bin spanning a few million years. Stage represents rock layers deposited in an Age. So, a diversity measure has been created by counting the number of dinosaur genus reported from successive bundles of rock layers, each representing a few million years of time.

Source: Paleobiology Navigator

The global diversity pattern shows episodes of diversification and decline in the Triassic, Jurassic and the Cretaceous. There appears to be a trend of increasing diversity through time with peak diversity in the Mid-Late Cretaceous. The Late Cretaceous extinction of dinosaurs forms the right side boundary.

The diversity measures in India show some differences with global trends. The number of Genus sampled are less. This is due to regional versus global sample. A smaller locale will generally have less of the total observed variation. The trends in diversity with time also is different from the global trajectories. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, this is a preservation artifact. Mesozoic terrestrial basins in India were receiving sediment only episodically. Depositional phases were interrupted by erosional hiatuses. Rock sections thus have been removed as well.   There was little to no sedimentation from Mid-Jurassic to Mid-Cretaceous in the Narmada rift basins. Hence, no fossils either. The lost diversity from this interval is irretrievable.

The second reason gives more hope. A couple of years ago, Dr. Dhananjay Mohabey of the Geological Survey of India gave a talk in Pune on Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of India. He mentioned that there are roomful of dinosaur fossils in government archives that are yet to be studied and catalogued. There is scope then to enhance our understanding of at least late Cretaceous dinosaur diversity of India.

I have barely scratched the surface. There are many more stories and patterns and trends in the Indian fossil record waiting to be teased out from this database. Dive in!