Dear Colleagues,

Archean terranes are the archives that underpin our understanding of early Earth. There are thirty-five large fragments of the crust of the Archean age around the world, including the Bundelkhand craton.

The Bundelkhand craton is one of the oldest cratonic blocks located in the north-central part of the Indian shield, currently the seventh oldest in the world. It exposes a large section of Archean continental crust that has a diverse evolutionary history. Among the Indian cratonic blocks, the Bundelkhand craton is one of the least understood cratons in terms of the general distribution of different types of ultramafic–mafic and felsic crusts and their formation and evolution.

The Bundelkhand craton consists of Archean tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorites (TTG) gneisses, granitoids (high K granites, diorites, sanukitoids), greenstone and schists (metasedimentary) complexes, a mafic-ultramafic layer intrusion, Paleoproterozoic mafic dikes and quartz veins. Paleoproterozoic (ca 2300–1800 Ma) riftogenic complexes (Gwalior and Bijawar groups) are deposited on the Archaean complexes. The Vindhyan Supergroup (1750–900 Ma) was also deposited around the craton.

Such a variety of complexes means that a variety of geodynamic settings provided the formation of a continental lithosphere of the craton. The evolution of the continental crust can be deciphered using field relationships, petrographic, geochronological, and geochemical data for TTG gneisses, greenstones, granitoids, mafic dikes, and quartz veins from the Bundelkhand craton.

This Special Issue will focus on the following topics:

• The in situ U-Pb and Lu-Hf geochronology of zircons and accessory minerals (apatite, rutile, monazite, titanite, etc.) of Archean complexes and to improve the understanding of the sequence of events and geodynamic evolution by interpretating these sets of data.

• Minerals and mineral associations as indicators of the metamorphic evolution of a cratonic terrane and interrelation with geodynamics.

• The geochemical characteristics of the magmatic complexes will provide the estimation of a role of the subduction-accretion and plume processes in the formation of the continental crust in the Archean.

• Geochronological, mineralogical, and geochemical investigations of unique giant quartz veins can decode the geodynamic environment of their formation during the Paleoproterozoic Era and how they play an important role in stabilizing the craton.

• The geochronological and geochemical studies on mafic dikes and intrusions provide evidence on the extensional processes that occurred in the craton, as a great bearing on the Paleoproterozoic evolution of the Bundelkhand craton.

Dr. Alexander Slabunov
Dr. Pradip Kumar Singh
Guest Editor

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• Bundelkhand craton
• Indian shield
• Archean
• Paleoproterozoic
• Petrology
• Geochronology
• Geochemistry
• Geodynamics
• Granitoids and TTG
• Greenstone
• Mafic dikes
• Quartz veins