Introduction of Indian Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Eggs and Eggshells of Peninsular India
Indian Late Cretaceous dinosaur nests, eggs and eggshell fragments have been widely recorded from the infra- and intertrappean sediments, which are distributed along the eastern, northeastern, northwestern margins, southern and southeastern margins of the
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Introduction of Indian Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Eggs and Eggshells of Peninsular India
1.1 Introduction The Deccan Traps of peninsular India, which overlie the dinosaur-bearing Lameta Formation, are one of the largest igneous (magmatic) provinces of the world and spread over a region of around 500,000 km2 having created an enormous amount of lava flow, estimated at ~1.3 × 106 km3 in western, central and southern India. This may have assumed a primary role in the biotic mass extinctions at the Cretaceous- Palaeogene boundary (Fig. 1.1, e.g., Courtillot et al. 1986, 1988; Duncan and Pyle 1988; Wignall 2001; Chenet et al. 2007; Jay and Widdowson 2008; Sharma and Khosla 2009; Keller et al. 2009a, b, c, 2011a, b, 2012, 2020; Malarkodi et al. 2010; Renne et al. 2013; Samant and Mohabey 2014; Fernández and Khosla, 2015; Fantasia et al. 2016; Font et al. 2015; Khosla 2015, 2019; Khosla and Verma 2015; Schoene et al. 2015; Kapur and Khosla 2016, 2019; Khosla et al., 2016; Verma et al. 2016, 2017; Kundal et al. 2018; Kapur et al. 2019; Kale et al. 2020a, b). During the last three decades, our understanding of the Deccan continental flood basalts and the infra- and intertrappean strata (sedimentary beds) linked to this volcanic activity has improved significantly (e.g., Courtillot et al. 1986, 1988; Sahni et al. 1994; Chenet et al., 2007, 2008; Keller et al. 2008, 2009a, b, c, 2010a, b; Malarkodi et al. 2010; Gertsch et al. 2011; Keller et al. 2011a, b, 2012; Fantasia et al. 2016; Fernández and Khosla 2015; Khosla and Verma 2015; Kapur et al. 2019; Khosla 2019). The age and total duration of the Deccan volcanic activity have come under strong scrutiny by different workers. Earlier, the total span of volcanic eruptions was estimated at between 3–5 m.y. or even 7–8 m.y. (Sheth et al. 2001; Kale et al. 2020a, b). However, Courtillot et al. (1986) and Duncan and Pyle (1988) ascertained that the period of volcanic eruptions spanned less than 1 m.y. within magnetic polarity chron 29R. Palaeomagnetic, radiometric, geochronologic, mineralogic, microfacies, biostratigraphic, chemostratigraphic and sedimentologic data indicate that 90% of the entire 3500-m thick, Deccan volcanic lava succession erupted in less than © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 A. Khosla, S. G. Lucas, Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Eggs and Eggshells of Peninsular India, Topics in Geobiology 51, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56454-4_1
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1 Introduction of Indian Late Cretaceous Dinosaur Eggs and Eggshells of Peninsular…
Fig. 1.1 Map showing the distribution of Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-Pg) Deccan volcanics and the major infratrappean and intertrappean fossiliferous localities of peninsular India. The localities are marked by freshwater, brackish water and marine environments. Marine incursions are along the Narbada-Tapti rift and possibly also along the Godavari Graben (reproduced from Khosla 2015 with permission from Editors of Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Geológicas)
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