A billion-year-old rift and an ancient sea created the modern landscape of the Chhattisgarh Basin in Central India
Research Matters Staff Writer(s) Kolkata 31 Aug 2026 Beneath the soil of central India lies a geological record of a time before plants, animals, or even the familiar shapes of our modern continents existed. New research has traced the geological history of the Chhattisgarh Basin, a massive geological feature in Central India’s Bastar craton. By examining layers of ancient rock, a team of…
In the heart of central India, beneath the modern landscape, lies a geological record dating back a staggering 1.4 billion years. A recent study reveals that this region, known as the Chhattisgarh Basin, began as a violent crack in Earth's crust. Geologists from the Indian Statistical Institute and the Geological Survey of India examined layers of ancient rock to trace the basin's history.
The study, which focuses on the Chandarpur Group, a 450-meter thick sequence of rocks, offers a unique glimpse into the Mesoproterozoic era, a period between 1,600 and 1,000 million years ago. The research team used facies analysis, assessing grain size, ripple patterns, and mineral chemistry to understand the environmental changes documented in the rocks.
The basin's creation started with rifting, where the Earth's crust began to pull apart roughly 1.4 billion years ago, forming a deep valley known as an intracratonic rift basin. Over millions of years, the valley deepened, allowing the sea to move in from the north-northwest, transforming the rift valley into a passive-margin basin, similar to today's Atlantic coastlines.
The final stage of the basin's evolution is represented by the Kansapathar sandstones, characterized by mature quartzarenites, indicating a stable, long-lasting coastline.
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