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Tectonomagmatic synthesis of the Panjal Traps and the opening of the Neotethys Ocean. (Top) Eruption of the Early Permian Panjal Traps occured within a continental rift zone of the Tethyan margin of Gondwana (India). The silicic volcanic rocks (crustal melts) are amongst the earliest lavas to erupt and are followed by the main flood basalt sequence that consists of high- and low-Ti basalts. The lower flows of basalt have chondritic isotopic signatures (ε_Nd(t) ± 1) whereas the upper flows are variably enriched (ε_Nd(t) = −2.0 to −5.3). It is likely that unseen silicic and mafic intrusive complexes also formed with the crust. (Bottom) As the adolescent continent rift transitions to a nascent ocean basin the basalts begin to have chemical similarity of MORB and have moderately depleted isotopic signatures (ε_Nd(t) = +2.4 to +4.3). As rifting continues the continental margin of Gondwana (India) is separated from the newly formed ribbon-like continent Cimmeria by the Neotethys Ocean. (See article titled Multiple mantle sources of the Early Permian Panjal Traps, Kashmir, India by Shellnutt and others, this issue, p. 589–619).