Structural and AMS analyses of basement Granitoid rocks of the Chitrial Area and its bearing on unconformity proximal type Uranium mineralization Cuddapah Basin Telangana

Abstract

The 2.51-2.52 Ga age Paleoproterozoic (Mukherjee et al., 2018) basement granitoid rocks of the Chitrial area in the Eastern Dharwar Craton (EDC) are unconformably overlain by the Mesoproterozoic Srisailam Formation (Nagaraja Rao et al., 1987) of the Cuddapah basin. Pre-Srisailam dyke sets (1.9-1.8 Ga; French et al., 2008) of N-S, WNW-ESE and ENE-WSW orientations traverse the granites around the Chitrial outlier. The map scale WNW – ESE trending Dindi lineament marks the southern limit of the outlier. Atomic Minerals Directorate (AMD) in recent times has established several ‘Uranium deposits’ from the Cuddapah basin of which one such deposit has been reported from the Chitrial outlier. In this latter deposit, uranium is hosted in Arechaean to Paleoproterozoic porphyritic basement granite unconformably overlain by the Mesoproteozoic unmetamorphosed sediments of the Srisailam Formation. According to the concentration of uranium mineralization, AMD further divided the Chitrial outlier into five blocks namely the ‘Main block’, ‘Block 1’, ‘Block 2’, ‘Block 3’ and ‘Block 4’.