Decoding regressive depositional history from the Neoproterozoic Panium Sandstone Formation, Kurnool Group, India using ‘sequence stratigraphy’ analysis and detrital zircon geochronology

The Neoproterozoic Panium Sandstone Formation of the Kurnool Group (India) offers a unique scope for understanding regressive depositional history in a Neoproterozoic clastic shoreline. It is divided into two ‘Systems Tracts’ namely forced regression and lowstand. Process-based facies and paleo-environmental analysis identified twelve different facies types; grouped under four facies associations (FA I–IV) belonging to both continental and shallow-marine domains viz. distal braided fluvial, swash bar-foreshore runnel, upper shoreface bar-trough, and lower shoreface bar-interbar. Whereas the fluvial deposit (FA I), sharply and erosionally overlying the argillaceous shelf succession of the Owk shelf shale, represents the product of forced regression, the wave-dominated shallow marine deposits (FA II, III and IV) record the depositional history of lowstand in the coastline. A basin ward transition from unconformity (base of FA I) to correlative conformity (base of shallow marine deposits FA II, III, and IV) is documented. The shoreline had a north-northwest to south-southeast alignment and the north-eastward flowing fluvial system met the shoreline at a high angle. Detrital zircon geochronology from the Panium fluvial sandstone allowed documentation of Paleoproterozoic (~2050 Ma–1800 Ma) and Mesoproterozoic (~1500 Ma to ~1200 Ma) age clusters, in addition to earlier documented age clusters from the Banganapalle alluvial sandstone present at the basal part of Kurnool succession. The new age data suggest an addition of new provenances and in turn, tectonic intervention behind the regression in the Kurnool coastline that triggered Panium deposition. Further, the Paleoproterozoic age cluster, obtained from the Panium fluvial deposit, helped in the justification of solitary zircon grain occurrences within the Owk Shale, as described in earlier studies.