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

Abstract

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.

Detrital apatite fission track evidence for provenance change in the Subei Basin and implications for the tectonic uplift of the Danghe Nan Shan (NW China) since the mid-Miocene

“…Many different techniques have been employed to determine the provenance change and tectonic activity in sedimentary basins among which the detrital apatite fission track method has proven to be the most sensitive to record provenance change (Sobel and Dumitru, 1997;Rohrman et al, 1996;Garver et al, 1999;Ruiz et al, 2004;Coutand et al, 2006;Zheng et al, 2006;Glotzbach et al, 2011;Patel et al, 2014). But so far, there has been no comparable study of detrital apatite fission track ages from the key Tiejianggou section of the Subei Basin.…”

Mio‐Pliocene exhumation of the hinterland and sediments provenance of the Neogene strata from Kumaun Himalaya of northwest India: Insights from detrital fission‐track thermochronology

“…3-24 h at 240 C. Before thermal neutron irradiation from FRM-II, Germany, a thin muscovite plate (external detector) of low-U content (<5 ppb) was added on the polished mounts to obtain the induced track densities. The induced tracks on mica were revealed after etching in 48% HF at room temperature for 3-5 min (Patel et al, 2014).…”

“…This is based on the spontaneous fission of U 238 in a crystal lattice, which produces submicroscopic linear damage traces (fission tracks) and etching analysis revealed fission tracks that could be observed under an optical microscope. It is widely used to study the provenance and thermal history of the foreland basin (Jain et al, 2009; Patel et al, 2014). In this study, detrital apatite and zircon minerals were extracted from seven sandstone samples of the Siwalik Group of the Kumaun region (Figure 2b).…”

“…Before thermal neutron irradiation from FRM‐II, Germany, a thin muscovite plate (external detector) of low‐U content (<5 ppb) was added on the polished mounts to obtain the induced track densities. The induced tracks on mica were revealed after etching in 48% HF at room temperature for 3–5 min (Patel et al, 2014). The spontaneous or induced track densities were determined on internal mineral surfaces using an Olympus BX‐50 microscope with 100x dry lens and total magnification of 1250× (see the FT data; Table 2).…”

Fission-track thermochronological evidence for the Yanshanian tectonic evolution of the northern Junggar Basin, northwest China

“…Fission-track (FT) thermochronology was developed on the basis of the closure temperature theory and the concept of cooling age, which effectively records tectonic events in the low-temperature range and recovers corresponding geothermal histories (Gleadow et al, 1986;Gallagher et al, 1998;Ruiz et al, 2004;Ketcham et al, 2018;Tian et al, 2020a). FT thermochronology has been widely used in a variety of studies, including analysis of the thermal history of sedimentary basins, rock uplift rates, constrained stratigraphy ages, and the tectonic evolution of basins (Zhu et al, 2005;Patel et al, 2014;Ge et al, 2016;Ansberque et al, 2018;Jian et al, 2018;Bernet, 2019;Zattin and Wang, 2019;Peng et al, 2020;Tian et al, 2020b He et al, 2022a;He et al, 2022b). We studied the tectonic thermal evolution, including the peak age, of the northern Junggar Basin during the Yanshanian via zircon and apatite FT (AFT) dating.…”