Tidal rhythmites in offshore shale: A case study from the Palaeoproterozoic Chaibasa shale, eastern India and implications

Tidal rhythmites have been documented from modern continental shelves and distal offshore settings. In significant contrast to their modern counterparts, sedimentological studies of ancient tidal rhythmites formed in distal offshore settings and quantification of tidal rhythms encoded therein are, however, scarce. This paper presents sedimentological analysis of vertically accreted tidal rhythmites from the Palaeoproterozoic Chaibasa shale facies in India, and quantification of their tidal rhythms. The facies characteristics of the Chaibasa Shale coupled with harmonic analysis of the laminae thicknesses of the sandstone inter-layers corroborate a distal shelf palaeogeography for the generation of the vertically accreted tidal rhythmites. The latter are the distal counterparts of laterally accreted, tidal “bundle” deposits, well preserved within the shallow marine Chaibasa sandstones. The number of lunar days in a synodic month (∼23) estimated from the Chaibasa shale facies is, however, considerably lower than that estimated from the Chaibasa sandstone facies (∼32) suggesting that the tidal record encoded from the Chaibasa shale facies is incomplete.