ORIGIN AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE PENINSULAR INDIA

The origin of rocks of Peninsular India is more than 3600 million years old. Before the Carboniferous period, it was a part of the Gondwanaland. In the opinion of geologists, during the Archaean Period, the India Peninsula never subsided under the sea permanently. It was more rigid, stable and had remained almost unaffected by the mountain building forces. However, it experienced block faulting and displacement during the subsequent periods as evidenced by the Dharwar and Gondwana formations and the fault valleys of the Narmada, Tapi and Son rivers.

It was during the Carboniferous Period that coal was formed in the Damodar, Son, Mahanadi and Godavari basins. During the Cretaceous Period, large scale vulcanicity produced the Deccan Trap (the Lava Plateau of India), comprising lava sheets of several thousand metres in depth. The Deccan Trap originated about 146 million years back when the magma flowed from the depth of about 40 km below the crust.