As many as seven tsunamis from the past 8000 years are evidenced by sand sheets that rest on buried wetland soils at Badabalu, southern Andaman Island, along northern part of the fault rupture of the giant 2004 Aceh-Andaman earthquake. The uppermost of these deposits represents the 2004 tsunami. Underlying deposits likely correspond to historical tsunamis of 1881, 1762, and 1679 CE, and provide evidence for prehistoric tsunamis in 1300–1400 CE, in 2000–3000 and 3020–1780 BCE, and before 5600–5300 BCE. The sequence includes an unexplained hiatus of two or three millennia ending around 1400 CE, which could be attributed to accelerated erosion due to Relative Sea-Level (RSL) fall at ~3500 BP. A tsunami in 1300–1400, comparable to the one in 2004, was previously identified geologically on other Indian Ocean shores. The tsunamis assigned to 1679, 1762, and 1881, by contrast, were more nearly confined to the northeast Indian Ocean. Sources have not been determined for the three earliest of the inferred tsunamis. We suggest a recurrence of 420–750 years for mega-earthquakes having different source, and a shorter interval of 80–120 years for large magnitude earthquakes.

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A foraminiferal assemblage comprising 30 species dominated by the family Vaginulinidae is recovered from the Chari Formation exposed at Keera Dome, Kutch. The paper presents a systematic account of eight species, reported for the first time form the Indian region. Preliminary interpretations regarding age and palaeoenvironment are drawn on the basis of the recovered foraminiferal assemblage. The assemblage supports a Callovian to Oxfordian age for the studied sequence. A near shore, open marine environment ranging from mid to outer shelf is interpreted on the basis of the foraminiferal assemblage.

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Mesozoic rocks are extensively and excellently preserved in the western Indian shield in several basins. The Kachchh Mainland Basin (KMB), comprising six small subbasins, is the main repository of these sediments. Habo Dome Basin, situated in the easternmost part of KMB and largest among the six basins, hosts clastics of the Chari Formation of Jurassic age. The fluctuating transgressive-regressive facies cycle, developed during the Callovian and Late Early Oxfordian in the Habo Dome Basin, was mainly controlled by local tectonics and not by global eustatic fluctuations. Near magmatic relationships are displayed by various elements of the clastic rocks of Habo Dome Basin. Two litho-chemical groups have been identified in Habo Dome Basin, which are cyclically repeated over entire lithostratigraphic sequence, indicating alternate pulses of sediment inputs from two different sources under palpitating tectonic conditions. Provenance indicator elements and their ratios coupled with source modeling indicate predominantly felsic source with basic and alkalic components. Integrated analysis of petrograhic and geochemical characteristics suggests two source terranes for these rocks: a granitoid source with significant basic volcanics (Banded Gneissic Complex) and a granite-gneissic source with minor alkaline volcanics (Nagarparkar Massif) lying to northeast and NNW respectively. The petrochemistry of Habo Dome clastics suggests their deposition in a fault controlled sink which was influenced by sea level changes. Drifting of the Indian plate resulted in the opening of series of rifted basins in the Kachchh Mainland during Late Triassic/Early Jurassic, which were closed later during collision of Indian plate with Eurasia at early Eocene. The Habo Dome Basin which opened up as a half graben in response to the initial stress regime, remained tectonically unstable until the cessation of pre and post collisional stress regimes.