Testing the Inherited Lithospheric Weakness Hypothesis beneath the Bengal Basin: A Quantitative Test Design for Structural Control on Accommodation

Abstract

This perspective converts a proposed inherited control on Bengal Basin accommodation into an age-neutral, falsifiable test. Boreholes and mine records constrain Paleoproterozoic basement domains and fault-bounded Permian depocentres on the Stable Shelf, whereas seismic, receiver-function, potential-field, stratigraphic, and geodetic studies constrain Cretaceous margin development and younger deformation farther east and south. I evaluate these observations through four linked test families: breakup kinematics; crustal and potential-field imaging; analogue and rheological predictions; and subsidence modelling. A Permian end member is admissible only where dated syn-rift growth, pre-Cretaceous existence or sealing, and mechanically plausible later reuse coincide at the same structure. The quantitative workflow decompacts stratigraphy and applies one sediment-unloading correction, paleowater-depth and isostatically amplified eustatic corrections, finite-duration thermal subsidence, flexural and convergent loading, compaction, magmatic loading or underplating, lower-crustal density change, and dynamic-topography alternatives. Candidate inherited boundaries are defined before model fitting and tested by blocked cross-validation across independent seismic, native gravity–magnetic, and well–stratigraphic data families. Constrained randomizations retain the observed segment number, length, strike, spacing, connectivity, survey masks, and mapped data gaps; a max-statistic permutation procedure controls family-wise error across networks, observables, filters, and distance bands. ILWH is interpreted as contributory only if an independently mapped pre-Cretaceous boundary produces a geologically meaningful, spatially persistent improvement in withheld predictions without requiring implausible weakness, density, stretching, or thermal parameters. Otherwise, inherited control is either unnecessary for the tested observations or unresolved in age and continuity.