Provenance of Cenozoic Indus Fan Sediments (IODP Sites U1456 and U1457)

Provenance analysis of IODP Expedition 355 cores in the Laxmi Basin sheds new light on the erosional evolution of the Himalayan belt and its western syntaxis during the Neogene and on large-scale mass-wasting and magmatic events that affected the western continental margin of India in the mid-Miocene and early Paleocene. In the cored Laxmi Basin succession, heavy minerals are far less affected by selective diagenetic dissolution than in forelandbasin sandstones exposed along the Himalayan front. Occurrence of euhedral aegirine and apatite in lower Paleocene mudrocks can be tied to alkaline volcanism affecting the adjacent western Indian margin during the late stage of Deccan activity. In the mid-Miocene Nataraja Slide (the second-largest mass-transport deposit reported from passive margins worldwide), dominant carbonate detritus and depleted heavy-mineral suites (including apatite, garnet, and locally augite or rare aegirine) reveal gravitational failure and sliding of the entire succession of carbonate and siliciclastic Paleogene to lower Neogene strata originally accumulated offshore of the Saurashtra margin of western India. Contrary to previous inferences, reworking of Indus-derived detritus by the slide was negligible. The overlying upper Miocene to lower Pleistocene turbidite package has the same feldspatho-litho-quartzose to litho-feldspathoquartzose signature of modern Indus fluvio-deltaic sand, indicating that amphibolite-facies metamorphic rocks have been widely exposed in the Himalaya–Karakorum orogen since at least the mid-Miocene. Pleistocene nannofossil oozes with planktonic foraminifera at the top of the fan contain a very subordinate litho-feldspatho-quartzose terrigenous fraction including augitic clinopyroxene, suggesting mixing of dominant biogenic debris with minor detritus contributed both by the Indus River and by a river draining western peninsular India, possibly the paleo-Narmada or the paleo-Tapti.