Evolution of the Himalaya

Abstract

The compression and attendant deformation of a thick and vast sedimentary prism formed since Early Riphean times on the northern continental margin of the Indian craton gave rise to the Himalaya mountains as a result of convergence and collision of the Indian and Asian plates. The oceanic trench-sediments, tectonically implanted with sea-floor material and intimately associated with calc-al-kaline volcanics in the narrow Sindhu-Tsangpo belt extending from Kohistan through Dras, Leh, Darchen (Mansarovar) to Shigatse and beyond, represent the subduction-island arc complex which developed south of the dynamic southern margin of the Asian continent and was welded to the colliding Indian plate during the late Eocene to Oligocene period. This complex is fringed to the north by a wide zone of Andean-type granitic bodies. The evolution of the Himalayan orogen is closely connected with the development of the present-day Andaman-Nicobar-Indonesia island arc-subduction system in the southeast and the Makran Ranges-Oman Trench in the southwest. The evolution of the Himalaya was accomplished in four major phases of tectonic upheaval during the late Cretaceous to Palaeocene (Karakoram phase), late Eocene to Oligocene (Malla Johar phase), middle Miocene to Pontian (Sirmurian phase), and late Pliocene to middle Pleistocene (Siwalik phase). While the Karakoram phase marks the convergence of continents and the Malla Johar phase represents the collision and subduction, it was during the Sirmurian upheaval that the main tectonic features developed and the Himalaya acquired its distinctive structural complexion.