23 - The Pliocene–Pleistocene boundary in the Indian subcontinent

Summary

Introduction

In 1973, the Geological Survey of India proposed a project on the Tertiary–Quaternary boundary to cover the global perspective of the boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene. This proposal was merged with the “Neogene/Quaternary Boundary” project initiated at about the same time by the Geological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, thus giving rise to IGCP Project 41 (Nikiforova and Alekseev, Chapter 1, this volume).

The Indian national working group for IGCP-41 was formed in 1974 with M. V. A. Sastry as convenor and (from March 1981) with A. Ranga Rao as co-convenor. Members were as follows: B. S. Towari, Panjab University; V. V. Sastri, Oil and Natural Gas Commission, Dehra Dun; D. Niyogi, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; S. N. Rajaguru, Deccan College, Pune; M. S. Srinivasan, Banaras Hindu University; K. N. Prasad, K. K. Verma, and A. K. Dutta, Geological Survey of India. The working group functioned under the guidance of the director general of the Geological Survey of India, who was also the chairman of the Indian National Committee for the IGCP. A major contribution was the 1979 field conference on the Neogene–Quaternary boundary as it related to the Siwalik and the Karewa deposits of India, which stimulated much new work (Sastry et al., 1981). The present report contains the results of progress since that field conference.

Neogene and Quaternary deposits are widely exposed in the foothills of the Himalaya, in the Vale of Kashmir, in the coastal regions of the Indian peninsula, and in the Andaman Islands. While the Himalayan foothills, Kashmir, and peninsular India have continental deposits, the Andaman Islands preserve a good sequence of deep-water marine facies.