Basin provenance and post-depositional thermal history along the continental P/T boundary of the Raniganj basin, eastern India: Constraints from apatite fission track dating.

Apatite fission-track analysis has been applied to the Raniganj and Panchet formations of Raniganj basin of Gondwana Supergroup to unravel its thermal and provenance history. Apatite fission track age population from both Raniganj and Panchet formations indicate partial annealing and point to a maximum temperature of around ∼100-110°C during their post depositional evolution. The sandstone of Raniganj Formation has five peak ages at 26.3, 59.3, 109.7, 173.7 and 299.9 Ma, while Panchet Formation has three peak ages at 25.4, 143.5 and 281.3 Ma. This implies that the provenance of the Raniganj Formation of late Permian and Panchet Formation of early Triassic changed obviously. According to thermotectonic evolution of the Gondwana basin, these apatites with different FT ages possibly represent different source components, although partial annealing had occurred to these apatites. Possibly all the apatites had transported from the Precambrian basement which was undergoing deformation due to Gondwana rifting initiated during Carboniferous period. Due to this, the basement was undergoing inhomogeneous thermal history which became source of sediments for Raniganj basin. Apatite FT ages of both Raniganj and Panchet formations have peak ages between 25 and 60 Ma, which perhaps recorded the cooling/uplift history during Cenozoic Alpine-Himalayan orogeny. Given a palaeo-thermal gradient of 40° C/km, it can be deduced that the Raniganj basin has uplifted about 3km at an average rate of about 0.09mm/a since 25-60 Ma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]