Palynofacies
In order to remove the carbonates from the sediments and prepare the
palynofacies, a 10 gm sample was treated with 10% HCl. Following three
to four rounds of washing with distilled water, the residual material
was treated with a 40% HF solution to dissolve the silicates. After
thoroughly washing and sieving the samples using a 20-micron sieve,
polyvinyl alcohol was used to produce strewn slides, which were
subsequently mounted with Canada balsam (Combaz, 1964; Traverse, 1994;
Tyson, 1995; Batten, 1996) and scanned under an Olympus BH-2 microscope
and photographs captured with a DP-25 camera on 200X/400X/1000X. The
palynofacies recovered were grouped into three broad categories: opaque
phytoclasts (degraded and charcoal organic matter (OM), degraded brown
OM, Structured OM), palynomorphs (viz., pollen/spore, algal/fungal
remains, grass remains, Zoomorphs) and amorphous OM using the published
literature (Traverse, 1994; Tyson, 1995; Sebag et al., 2006; Prasad et
al., 2013; Sridhar et al., 2020). Along with the palynofacies, ratio of
various palynofacies such as degraded charcoal (Dc), burnt charcoal
(Bc), cuticle (C), and tracheid (T) have been carried on the frequency
data to provide better insight into the transport and degradation of
organic matter.