Research Projects

The origin and evolution of Earth's crust and cratons during the Archean Era remains an enigmatic problem for scientists worldwide. The Archean eon bridged the Hadean earth and the Proterozoic era, and its crustal evolution is crucial to understanding early earth tectonics, ocean-atmospheric system evolution, and biosphere origin. Archean cratons have great economic potential, such as the Dharwar Craton in India, which contains Paleoarchean to Neoarchean TTG-greenstone terranes with distinct magmatic pulses and crust building episodes. Initially divided into Western (WDC) and Eastern (EDC), the Dharwar Craton was considered the fundamental dividing line between these two cratonic blocks. Recent evidence has revealed the existence of a previously unrecognized central block, Central Dharwar Craton (CDC), passing through the WDC at Chitradurga. This new tripartite division requires reinterpretation of two-terrane accretion models and metamorphic and magmatic age data. The project proposes to investigate the pressure-temperature-time (P T t) evolution of metamorphosed rocks in the Chitradurga Greenstone Belt and Shear Zone, including variations from north to south along the belt and the enclave suite of rocks within the surrounding TTGs. P T t evolution of metamorphic rocks is directly related to geodynamics, as different tectonic settings vary in their thermal architecture. The project will employ detailed petrological, thermodynamic, and diffusion modeling, integrated with geochronology, to achieve its objective.