Genesis of the Khanapur 'Red Beds', Maharashtra, India

An erosional landscape characterized the Western Ghats in the Deccan Volcanic Province of India. The upland region shows the absence of sedimentological records for the stratigraphic period from post-Eocene except laterites which are extensively developed. The absence of any sedimentological records, therefore, has put severe constraint on the reconstruction of the Tertiary history of the landscape. While the major known geological events like the northward drift of Indian subcontinent, the formation of Western Ghats and the establishment of monsoon system in response to the rise of Himalayas, the repercussions of these geotectonic events on the landforms are not yet properly understood. The study of the existing records in the forms of offshore deposits, denudational surfaces, and the laterites and laterite-like materials, thus, is an effort to reconstruct the palaeoclimatic and palaeotectonic history of at least a part of the Indian Peninsula. The semi-arid to sub-humid region of the Khanapur Plateau on the eastern flanks of the Western Ghats has shown the presence of laterite-like deposits that referred to as 'laterite' by a number of earlier workers. The so-called 'laterites' exhibit all the characters of typical 'red beds'. It observed that the 'red beds' rest unconformably over basalts that have their own weathering profile.