Heavy minerals in provenance studies: an overview

Over the past few decades, the advent of sophisticated imaging and in situ measurements as well as data deconvolution techniques have led to remarkable progress in the field of heavy mineral research. The prevalence of zircon in a wide range of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks has been used frequently in estimating provenance, depositional age, tectonic settings, drainage evolution and crustal evolution. However, the biased age spectra (induced by hydrodynamic fractionation, sampling and measurement protocol and inheritance) yielded by detrital zircons reinvigorated the need to utilise other heavy mineral phases (monazite, apatite, titanite and rutile) for addressing a range of geological processes. Different heavy minerals are moderate to highly durable and provide variable response to magmatic and metamorphic events thereby providing clues that may be missed by single detrital grain analysis, thus emphasising the multi-mineral detrital approach as an indispensable method to investigate several geological processes. The present review highlights the role of detrital zircon and the associated limitations in using a single heavy mineral approach in geological studies. This review further emphasises the advantages of using multi-mineral/proxy studies and discusses the scope of heavy mineral research.