Abstract
Surrounded by the Himalayan Orogen, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea on its north, south, east and west, respectively, the Indian subcontinent represents more than 3.5 Ga of geological history spanning from the Archean to Quaternary. The exposed Precambrian basement of India comprises four Archean cratonic nuclei welded together by several Proterozoic mobile belts. Proterozoic intracontinental basins that contain mostly undeformed sedimentary successions unconformably overlie the basement. The basement rocks are covered in the north along the Himalayan front by thick deposits of the Indo-Ganga alluvium, and in the west central region by the end-Cretaceous Deccan flood basalts. Basins related with intra- to inter-continental rifting of the Indian craton viz. the Gondwana Basins and those of the east and west coast record the Phanerozoic history of India from Permian to Cenozoic. Since ~55 Ma, the continent-continent collision between the northerly drifting Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate has guided the development of the structural design of the Himalayan Orogen. These tectono-geomorphic processes were responsible for the first order relief structure of the northern part of the Indian subcontinent including the development of the topography of the spectacular Himalayan Orogen and its foreland.
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Tandon, S.K., Chakraborty, P.P., Singh, V. (2014). Geological and Tectonic Framework of India: Providing Context to Geomorphologic Development. In: Kale, V. (eds) Landscapes and Landforms of India. World Geomorphological Landscapes. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8029-2_1
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