498 Article 498 by Anil Kumar1, Yogesh Ray2, Rupa Ghosh1, Sujay Bandyopadhyay3, Vimal Singh4, Pradeep Srivastava1* Late Quaternary sedimentation history of the Himalaya and its foreland 1Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, 33 GMS Road, Dehradun 248 001, Uttarakhand, India 2 National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Headland Sada, Vasco da Gama-403 804, Goa, India 3Department of Geography, Kazi Nazrul University, Asansol 713 340, Paschim Barddhaman, West Bengal, India 4Department of Geology, Chhatra Marg, University of Delhi, Delhi – 110007, India *Correspondence, Email:
[email protected] (Received : 20/01/2019; Revised accepted : 7/08/2019) https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2020/020032 Himalaya and its foreland acted as a coupled system (Molnar, 1984). Soon after the collision, a forearc basin was formed that responded to the climate variability and evolved as at the leading edge of the Indian Plate where molassic sedimentation took place from Oligocene to early Miocene (Parkash et al., 1980, a thrust and fold belt. The river systems draining the Burbank et. al., 1996a). These sediments are called as Indus molasse; Himalaya, the Ganga foreland act as an artery that helps the fossil record suggests that the elevation of the basin was ~600 m registering climate and tectonic signals into its above the sea level (asl) (Paul et al., 2007). The ongoing northward geomorphology and sedimentary history. The paper push of the Indian Plate led to a southward progressive deformation discusses the late Quaternary landscape evolution of the and formation of Himalayan fold and thrust belt that now touches a maximum elevation of >8.5 km.