Himalayan Geology
(Journal)

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Himalayan Geology, Vol. 30 (2), 2009, pp.193-198 Printed in India

Miocene terrestrial mammals from circum-Indian Ocean, focus on eustacy and Himalayan orogenesis

MARTIN PICKFORD1, ANSUYA BHANDARI2, B.N. TIWARI2*, D.M. MOHABEY3

¹College de France and Département Histoire de la Terre, UMR 5143 du CNRS, 8, rue Buffon, 75005, Paris, France

²Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, Dehra Dun 248 001, India

³Palaeontology Laboratory, Geological Survey of India, Central Region, Nagpur 440 006, India

Abstract: For more than two centuries students of the geological history of the Earth have debated whether the evolution of the Earth's crust has been gradual or whether it was punctuated by periods of intense activity separated from each other by relatively quiescent periods. Evidence has been gathering that the episodic (but not catastrophic) nature of global scale tectonics is more likely to be the correct model. The consequences of episodic global scale geotectonic activity are that many downstream histories (those resulting from geotectonic activity) have also been episodic, including sea-level history (eustacy), mountain building activity, rifting activity, volcanicity and even biogeography.

In this contribution we examine some of the relationships between fossiliferous circum-Indian Ocean sedimentary deposits and mountain building in the Himalayas, and note that during the Cenozoic there appears to have been a strong temporal relationship between orogenesis, trap-type volcanic activity, rifting, eustatic history and palaeobiology. All these phenomena are superficial manifestations of processes that are taking place deep within the Earth's mantle and core, which for unknown reasons, appear to affect the crust in an episodic way.