Shiva crater

The Shiva crater is a structure, thought by some to be an impact crater (astrobleme), located in the Indian Ocean west of India, near Mumbai. It was named by the paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee for Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and renewal.

It has been suggested that it formed around 65 million years ago, the same time as a number of other impacts that are recorded in the K-T boundary. Although it has shifted since its formation because of sea floor spreading, when pieced together it would be about 600 km by 450 km across and 12 km deep (and may be just part of a larger crater). It is estimated to have been made by a bolide (an asteroid or meteoroid) 40 km in diameter.

The Deccan Traps are closely associated with the crater, lending support to the idea that the traps were created by an impact event. At the time of the K-T extinction, India was located over the Réunion hotspot of the Indian ocean. Hot material rising from the mantle flooded portions of India with a vast amount of lava, the Deccan Traps, beginning a few million years before the K-T extinction and becoming very abundant about 65 million years ago. The vast magma plume finally breaking out at the surface could have been accelerated by an impact event —but could have occurred regardless of such an event.

External links

Dear geologist and tectonists,Ancient sanskrit word Dakshinapatha gave its name Dakkhan to modern Deccan or Dekkan.

Does the theory not contradicting the original concepts of statements below?

Geography

It lies south of the Indo-Gangetic plain. It is bounded by the Western Ghats in the west, the Eastern Ghats to the east, the Nilgiris in the south and the Satpura and Vindhya ranges in the north. The plateau elevation is about 500 m on average. It is composed of black volcanic basalt soil. The chief crop is cotton, however sugarcane, rice and other crops also common. Several Indian states cover parts of the Deccan: Maharashtra covers most of the northern plateau, and Chhattisgarh the northeast corner. Andhra Pradesh covers the east-central portion of the Deccan, and Karnataka the west-central and most of the southern portion of the plateau, with the southernmost portion in Tamil Nadu. The largest city in the Deccan is Bangalore, southern India. Other major cities include Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, and Nagpur, Pune, and Sholapur in Maharashtra.

The Godavari River and its tributaries, including the Indravati, drain most of the northern portion of the plateau, rising in the Western Ghats and draining east towards the Bay of Bengal. The Tungabhadra River, Krishna River and its tributaries, including the Bhima River, which also run from west to east, drain the central portion of the plateau. The southernmost portion of the plateau is drained by the Kaveri River, which rises in the Western Ghats of Karnataka and bends south to break through the Nilgiri hills into Tamil Nadu, emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The Kaveri drops off the Deccan Plateau, forming the Sivasamudram Falls, the second biggest waterfall in India and the sixteenth largest in the world.[1]

Geology

The vast volcanic basalt beds of the Deccan were laid down in the massive Deccan Traps eruption, which occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. Some paleontologists speculate that this eruption may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Layer after layer was formed by the volcanic activity that lasted many thousands of years, and when the volcanoes became extinct, they left a region of highlands with typically vast stretches of flat areas on top like a table. Hence it is also known as Table Top.

Typically the Deccan Plateau is made up of basalt. This is an extrusive igneous rock. Also in certain sections of the region, we can find granite, which is an intrusive igneous rock. The difference between these two rock types are: basalt rock forms on eruption of lava, that is, on the surface (either out of a volcano, or through massive fissures -- as in the Deccan basalts -- in the ground), while granite forms deep within the Earth. Granite is a felsic rock, meaning it is rich in potassium feldspar and quartz. This composition is continental in origin (meaning it is the primary composition of the continental crust). Since it cooled underground, it has large visible crystals. Basalt, on the other hand, is mafic in composition -- meaning it is rich in pyroxene and, in some cases, olivine, both of which are Mg-Fe rich minerals. Basalt is similar in composition to mantle rocks, indicating that it came from the mantle and did not mix with continental rocks. Basalt forms in areas that are spreading, whereas granite forms in areas that are colliding. Since both rocks are found in the Deccan Plateau, it indicates two different environments of formation.

The Deccan is rich in minerals. Primary mineral ores found in this region are mica and iron ore in the Chhota Nagpur region, and diamonds, gold and other metals in the Golconda region.

• The Shiva Crater: Implications for Deccan Volcanism, India-seychelles Rifting, Dinosaur Extinction, and Petroleum Entrapment at the Kt Boundary by Chatterjee, Sankar; Guven, Necip; Yoshinobu, Aaaron; and Donofrio, Richard; Paper No. 60-8, 2003 Seattle Annual Meeting of Geological Society of America (November 2–5, 2003).
• Deep Impact - Shiva: Another K-T Impact? by Leslie Mullen for Astrobiology Magazine (Nov. 2004).

18°40′N 70°14′E