Page 79 - BE Book PESD 2021 22

PESD_GSU_20200814_0518_(ongoing): Paleoenvironmental significance of
freshwater carbonates in the Upper Gondwanas of India

PESD_GSU_20200814_0518_(ongoing)
1. Title of the Project:

Paleoenvironmental significance of freshwater carbonates in the Upper Gondwanas of India
2. Name of Proposing Scientists:
Parthasarathi Ghosh
3. Brief objectives and justification:

Freshwater carbonates preserved in ancient sedimentary rocks provide valuable information
on physical, chemical and biotic environments of the past. Such carbonates associated with
fluvial deposits of the Upper Gondwanas of India serve as proxies for physical and biotic
environments of the Gondwanaland for the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic time interval. This
project aims to characterize the freshwater carbonate depositing environments that prevailed
in these geologically ancient sedimentary basins from a study of field feature, microfabric and
geochemical characteristic of the cross-bedded grainstones and carbonate mudstones
occurring in some of the Upper Gondwana formations. The results are likely to improve upon
the available plaeogeographic and plaeoclimatic reconstructions.
4. Name of Others Scientists associated with their affiliation:
From the Institute:

Prof. Saswati Bandyopadhyay, GSU, ISI, Kolkata Prof. Dhurjati P. Sengupta, GSU, ISI,
Kolkata Dr. Sanghita Dasgupta, PDF, IIT Mumbai Ms. Suparna Goswami (SRF, GSU) Mr.
Shantanu Datta, JFR, GSU
From Other Institutions:

NONE
5. Date of Commencement:
01/04/2019
6. Expected date of Completion:

31/03/2023
7. Interim report(max 500 words) including complete list of publications and patents
based on the work from the project:
In the first year of the project, geological fieldwork was carried out in two Gondwana Basins
of the peninsular India, i.e., the Rewa Gondwana Basin, MP and Pranhita Godavari Gondwana
Basin, Telangana, for about 12 weeks. The fieldwork in the Satpura Basin could not be
conducted.

During the fieldwork the exposures of the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic litho-formations
were identified, e.g., Tiki, Maleri, Dharmaram and Lower Member of Kota formations. These
deposits are characterized by the presence of thick units of red and massive mudstones
alternating with thinner units of sandstones and much thinner units of conglomerates
(containing clasts of extra-basinal origin). The carbonates occur as few cm to tens of cm-thick
beds encased within mudstone. Though they are volumetrically insignificant, they are found
at several stratigraphic levels in each of the studied successions.

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