Trace fossil evidences of an Early Miocene paleoseismic event and depositional regime change from the Kutch (Kachchh) Basin

Unconsolidated siliciclastic sediments can undergo post-burial deformation, which leads to the formation of distinctive sedimentary structures, known as soft-sediment deformation structures (SSDS). The presence of a series of sand volcanoes confined to a particular lithostratigraphic horizon can represent a paleoseismic activity and, thereby, exemplifies the concept of “seismite”. The Kutch Basin has been a tectonically active region since the initiation of eastern Gondwana rifting followed by a tectonic inversion during the Cenozoic due to the collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. A stratum-bound series of sand volcanoes belonging to the Khari Nadi Formation (KNF) is exposed along the banks of Khari River. They separate the shallow marine deposits below and non-marine deposits above with their characteristic marine and paleosol trace fossil suites, respectively. Although a seismogenic origin has been much debated for the SSDS, the ichnofabric analysis of the sand-volcano-bearing stratum unequivocally points toward such an origin under a shallow seafloor condition. In addition to the sedimentary regime change from an open shallow-marine setting to a continental depositional environment concomitant with basinal uplift, the behavior of the burrowing crustaceans testifies to a syn-depositional development of a fault network associated with the fluidization, sand volcanism, and the resilience of the trace-producers in surviving those processes until the sedimentary regime change in the overlying strata. Although the ichno-sedimentological evidence apparently differs from the previous works that proposed a continuous base-level rise from the beginning of deposition of the Khari Nadi Formation up to the middle part of the overlying Chhasra Formation, the paleoseismic activity, its ichnologic signature, and the depositional regime change refer to a higher-resolution (i.e., lower-order) sequence-stratigraphic change causing a short-duration regression within a longer-duration cycle of base-level rise.