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Plate-Tectonic Evolution of the Deep Ocean Basins Adjoining the Western Continental Margin of India—A Proposed Model for the Early Opening Scenario

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Petroleum Geosciences: Indian Contexts

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Abstract

The available plate-tectonic evolution models suggest that the deep ocean basins adjoining the western continental margin of India have evolved largely due to break-up and dispersal of India, Seychelles and Madagascar continental blocks since Late Cretaceous. Mainly owing to the availability of large number of well identified magnetic anomaly picks, the evolution of the region from chron C28ny (~62.5 Ma) and younger times is better constrained than the preceding period of its early evolution. Using constraints of several recently mapped regional scale tectonic features, a plausible model for that early evolution is proposed in this paper. Around 88.0 Ma the involved continental blocks were in their immediate pre-drift configuration where a wide continental rift zone existed between India and Madagascar. Seafloor spreading in the Mascarene Basin commenced shortly before 83.0 Ma. A ternary rift system off Saurashtra peninsula of western India, formed shortly before 68.5 Ma, reached seafloor spreading stage in the Laxmi and Gop basins around 67.6 and 64.7 Ma respectively. Around 62.5 Ma the ancestor of the Carlsberg Ridge spreading center developed between the Seychelles Plateau and the Laxmi Ridge while spreading in the northern Mascarene Basin ceased and spreading in the Laxmi and Gop basins continued at very slow rate. Between 60.9 and 57.9 Ma the spreading in the southern Mascarene Basin also ceased and the spreading center jumped north between the Laccadive Plateau and the northern boundary of the Mascarene Basin. The divergence regimes of the Gop, Laxmi and Laccadive basins ceased between 57.6 and 56.4 Ma, and the Laccadive Plateau and the Laxmi Ridge got welded to the Indian plate.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ma: millions of years before present.

  2. 2.

    myr: millions of years.

  3. 3.

    The peak, i.e. the main phase of DFB volcanism (as will be discussed in a later section), which most likely was around 65–66 Ma.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. S.W.A. Naqvi, Director, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO), Goa for permission to publish this work. We also thank Muhammad Shuhail for providing valuable inputs regarding magnetic fabric of the Mascarene Basin. All figures were drafted with the GMT software (Wessel and Smith 1995). The present treatment is an updated and refined version of a preliminary model, which was developed as part of a Ph.D research project carried out by VY under the guidance of GCB. GCB carried out this work with a CSIR research grant under Emeritus Scientist Scheme (Grant no. 21(845)/11/EMR-II). The paper is greatly benefited from the constructive reviews and valuable suggestions of Soumyajit Mukherjee and two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, Dona Paula, 403004, Goa, India

    G. C. Bhattacharya & V. Yatheesh

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  1. G. C. Bhattacharya
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Correspondence to G. C. Bhattacharya .

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Soumyajit Mukherjee

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Bhattacharya, G.C., Yatheesh, V. (2015). Plate-Tectonic Evolution of the Deep Ocean Basins Adjoining the Western Continental Margin of India—A Proposed Model for the Early Opening Scenario. In: Mukherjee, S. (eds) Petroleum Geosciences: Indian Contexts. Springer Geology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03119-4_1

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