Palynofloral and geochemical evidence for Permian-Triassic transition from Talcher Coalfield, Son-Mahanadi Basin, India: Insights into age, palaeovegetation, palaeoclimate and palaeowildfire

Abstract

The Permian-Triassic (P/T) transition is marked by the most severe mass-extinction event of the Phanerozoic. Although much is known about this event in the marine realm, there are many open questions regarding what happened during this period to many continental biota. In the case of plants, a drastic mass-extinction event has even been negated by some authors. To add about the knowledge on continental biota in India during this crucial time period, the present study analysed the palynology, palynofacies, organic geochemistry (biomarkers), stable isotopes, and charcoal within the subsurface Gondwana deposits of the Kamthi Formation (late Permian-early Triassic) from core TTB-7 from the Tribida block, located in the Talcher Coalfield of the Mahanadi Basin, India.

The primary objectives are to validate the age of the strata, ascertain the palaeodepositional setting of the palaeomire, and propose palaeobotanical evidence regarding the occurrence of wildfires within this stratigraphic succession and changes in floral content across the P/T transition. The palynological study proposes two palynoassemblage zones, Densipollenites magnicorpus and Klausipollenites schaubergeri, suggesting a latest Permian (Lopingian) and early Triassic (Induan?) age for the studied succession, respectively. The age is also inferred based on correlation with coeval assemblages from India and other Gondwana continents. The palynoassemblages reveal the dominance of Glossopteridales and Coniferales along with Filicales, Lycopsidales, Equisetales, Cordaitales and Peltaspermales. The relatively higher values of the carbon preference index and terrigenous/aquatic ratio also suggest higher plant input. However, a bimodal n-alkane distribution pattern suggests the contribution of terrigenous and microbial sources. Although the occurrences of long-chain alkanes indicate input of higher plants, the low P_wax values (<0.26) suggest relatively less contribution. The P_aqvalues (≌1) and amorphous organic matter (av. 33.24%) suggest a significant macrophyte input in the studied samples, pointing to the occurrence of moderate aquatic conditions in the basin.

Furthermore, the distribution of hopanoids and the content of degraded organic matter (av. 29.96%) reflect the bacterial degradation of organic matter. Also, the δ¹³C values of the studied section varied from -31.2‰ to -21.8‰. A large carbon isotopic offset of 9.4‰ across the P/T transition, Pr/Ph ratio (0.3-1.3) and shift in the distribution pattern of palynofacies components is indicating a significant change in climatic conditions. Moreover, the presence of macroscopic charcoal fragments of gymnospermous affinity with pre-charring colonization by fungi provides evidence for wildfire occurring during the Lopingian (Late Permian) in this basin.

Keywords

Glossopteridales / Palynology / Palynofacies / Bulk carbon isotope / Palaeowildfire / Biomarkers

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Srikanta Murthy: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Deveshwar P. Mishra: Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology. Dieter Uhl: Validation, Visualiza-tion, Writing - review & editing. Anju Saxena: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing. Vikram P. Singh: Methodology, Writ-ing - review & editing. Runcie P. Mathews: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - review & editing. Anurag Kumar: Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing - review & editing. Bindhyachal Pandey: Writing - review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Director (Prof. Mahesh G. Thak-kar), Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow for provid-ing the necessary permission and laboratory facilities to carry out this work (BSIP/RDCC/Publication no. 73/2024-25). Author (SM) expresses sincere thanks to DST (Govt. of India) project no. EEQ/2018/000303 for the financial support. SM is also thankful to the Coal Wing, Kolkata, Geological Survey of India, for providing samples under the MoU. We are also grateful to Dr. Trina Bose (Sci-entist, BSIP) and Dr. Subodh Kumar (T.O., BSIP) for their assistance in stable carbon isotope and SEM analysis, respectively. Authors are grateful to Dr. M. Santosh, Editorial Advisor, Geoscience Fron-ters for his efficient editorial support during the peer-review pro-cess and are also thankful to Dr. Sanghoon Kwon, Associate Editor, Geoscience Fronters and three reviewers (Dr. Enze Wang, Dr. Michael Brookfield and Dr. Alexander Wheeler) for their con-structive comments and valuable suggestions that helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102086.

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