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Geochemistry and petrogenesis of the Neoarchean Sandur metavolcanic rocks
  • Subarna Baidya,
  • Anshuman Giri,
  • Anand Rajagopal
Subarna Baidya
Indian Institute of Technology(Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Anshuman Giri
Indian Institute of Technology(Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad
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Anand Rajagopal
Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines) Dhanbad
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Abstract

The Sandur greenstone belt (SGB) is a distinctive greenstone belt as it is perched within the Closepet granitoid rocks (CG). The emplacement of the CG is attributed to intrusion in a crustal scale transcurrent shear zone towards the end of Archaean (Moyen et al., 2003). The Chitradurga shear zone that forms the eastern margin of the Chitradurga greenstone belt, located west of the Closepet granite, is considered as the boundary between WDC and EDC. As per the division of the Dharwar craton, the domination of volcano-sedimentary sequences in SGB with abundant BIF and considerable greywacke-argillite lithologies, attest their similarity to the greenstone belts of WDC. Closer to the SGB, the rocks of the CG are known to host excellent mafic microgranular enclaves (MME) which might indicate interaction between the granitic magma with the older greenstone belt lithologies during intrusion. It is interesting to note that there is a progressive increase in crustal thickness from north towards south in the Dharwar craton and the SGB is found associated with the CG in the shallow zones of the north (Moyen et al., 2003). The mafic volcanic rocks are predominantly basaltic in composition and are composed of amphibole, pyroxene, plagioclase and quartz with titanite and magnetite as accessory minerals. The rocks are classified as tholeiitic basalts that were metamorphosed to amphibolite grade. Preliminary geochemical studies on these rocks show significant differences in their trace element distribution. The chondrite-normalized REE patterns show moderate to high contents of REE and have unfractionated pattern. The basalts show a flat to slightly LREE enriched pattern. Some samples show slight negative Eu anomaly and some do not show any significant anomaly. Some associated rocks also have complementary enrichment-depletion of certain elements. All of these point to multiple petrogenetic processes involved in the generation of these magmatic precursor rocks.