Searching for the age of the upper Vindhyan basin, India: A view from paleomagnetism and geochronology

Abstract

The closure age of the Proterozoic Vindhyan basin is a long-standing puzzle, unresolved due to inconsistencies between paleontological, geochronological, and paleomagnetic data. Some fossil findings from the Upper Vindhyan basin suggest an Ediacaran closure age, Pb-Pb dating of carbonate units yield dates ranging from ∼ 750-910 Ma, and detrital zircon data generally support a Kleisian (800-1000 Ma) closure age. In this study, we review published detrital zircon data and apply a statistically robust method to estimate the maximum depositional age (MDA) of the upper Vindhyan Kaimur, Bhander, and Rewa groups. Additionally, we present new paleomagnetic data from the folded Bhander sandstones near the Great Boundary fault to establish the primary nature of the Bhander-Rewa paleomagnetic pole. Our analysis reveals an MDA of 945 ± 7 Ma, which aligns closely with the youngest zircon population in the spectra. This MDA also corresponds to the onset of the Delhi Orogeny to the west of the Vindhyan basin; collisional orogenesis in the Central Indian Tectonic Zone to the south; and more distal high-grade metamorphism and collisional tectonism in the northern Eastern Ghats belt providing a geologically meaningful context for the basin closure age. Our paleomagnetic data offers a robust field test for the Vindhyan pole and we demonstrate that proposals for terminal Tonian closure of the basin ( ∼ 850-770 Ma) are incompatible with extant paleomagnetic data from India.

Keywords

Vindhyan Basin / Paleomagnetism / Maximum depositional age / Detrital zircons / Geochronology

Declaration of competing interest

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

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the US-India Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship to JGM and to the Geological Society of America and the Sam Bowring scholarship to SK for financial support of this research. Prior to submission to Geoscience Frontiers, this paper was rejected by another journal after somewhat personal comments from two anonymous reviewers that helped frame the submission to Geoscience Frontiers. They are likely to still strongly oppose our conclusions. To them we quote Albert Einstein ‘‘ If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? ”. This edition of the paper was reviewed by John Geissman and two anonymous reviewers who provided additional guidance to improve this contribution. I (JGM) also thank Michelle Meert for her patience and help whilst I was in India working on this paper. The ideas expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the funding agencies. Paleomagnetic data from the folded sites reported in this contribution can be found in the MagIC database.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102168.

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