Relative Chronology in High-Grade Crystalline Terrain of the Eastern Ghats, India: New Insights

Abstract

The two major lithology or gneiss components in the polycyclic granulite terrain of the Eastern Ghats, India, are the supracrustal rocks, commonly described as khondalites, and the charnockite-gneiss. Northern Eastern Ghats belt, north of the Godavari rift has been defined as the Eastern Ghats Province, while that to the south has been defined as the Ongole domain; and although, these distinct crustal domains also record different ages of granulite metamorphism, both of these domains are dominated by the two lithologies. Many of the workers considered the khondalites as the oldest component with unknown basement and the charnockite- protoliths as intrusive into the khondalites. However, published geochronological data do not corroborate the aforesaid relations. Onset of khondalite sedimentation in the Proterozoic Eastern Ghats Province, constrained by detrital zircon data, as around 1.3 Ga and the charnockite-protolith emplacement between 1.9 and 2.9 Ga, argue against intrusion of felsic magma (tonalite, now enderbite!) in to the khondalites. The field relations of the hornblende-mafic granulite with the two gneiss components together with Sm-Nd isotopic data of the hornblende-mafic granulites (both the xenoliths within charnockites and those interbanded with the khondalites) indicate that khondalite sediments were deposited on older mafic crustal rocks. Mafic basement and supracrustal rocks were subsequently deformed and metamorphosed together during collisional orogeny at high to ultra-high temperatures – partial melting of mafic rocks producing the charnockitic melt; and partial melting of pelitic sediments producing the peraluminous granitoids. This is compatible with all the geochronological data as well as the petrogenetic model of partial melting for the charnockitic rocks in the Eastern Ghats Belt. The Ongole domain, south of the Godavari rift, though, is distinct in terms of the age of first/ earliest UHT metamorphism, but here too the charnockite-protoliths are older mafic rocks evidently not intrusive in to the khondalites.