Supersequences, superbasins, supercontinents – evidence from the Neoproterozoic–Early Palaeozoic basins of central Australia

Neoproterozoic sedimentary basins cover a large area of central Australia. They rest upon rigid continental crust that varies from c. 40–50 km in thickness. Whilst the crust was in part formed during the Archaean and early Palaeoproterozoic, its final assembly occurred at approximately 1.1 Ga as the Neoproterozoic supercontinent, Rodinia, came into being. The assembly process left an indelible imprint on the region producing a strong crustal fabric in the form of a series of north dipping thrusts that pervade much of the thick craton and extend almost to the Moho. Following a period of stability (1.1–0.8 Ga), a large area of central Australia, in excess of 2.5 × 10⁶ km², began to subside in synchroneity. This major event was due to mantle instability resulting from the insulating effect of Rodinia. Initially, beginning c. 900 Ma, a rising superplume uplifted much of central Australia leading to peneplanation of the uplifted region and the generation of large volumes of sand‐sized clastic materials. Ultimately, the decline of the superplume led to thermal recovery and the development of a sag basin (beginning at c. 800 Ma), which in turn resulted in the redistribution of the clastic sediments and the development of a vast sand sheet at the base of the Neoproterozoic succession. The superbasin generated by the thermal recovery was short lived (c. 20 M.y.) but, in conjunction with the crustal fabric developed during supercontinent assembly, it set the stage for further long‐term basin development that extended for half a billion years well into the Late Palaeozoic. Following the sag phase at least five major tectonic episodes influenced the central Australian region. Compressional tectonics reactivated earlier thrust faults that had remained dormant within the crust, disrupting the superbasin, causing uplift of basement blocks and breaking the superbasin into the four basins now identified within the central Australian Neoproterozoic succession (Officer, Amadeus, Ngalia and Georgina Basin). These subsequent tectonic events produced the distinctive foreland architecture associated with the basins and were perhaps the trigger for the Neoproterozoic ice ages. The reactivated basins became asymmetric with major thrust faults along one margin paralleled by deep narrow troughs that formed the main depocentres for the remaining life of the basins. The final major tectonic event to influence the central Australian basins, the Alice Springs Orogeny, effectively terminated sedimentation in the region in the Late Palaeozoic (c. 290 Ma). Of the six tectonic episodes recorded in the basinal succession only one provides evidence of extension, suggesting the breakup of east Gondwana at the end of the Rodinian supercontinent cycle may have occurred at close to the time of the Precambrian–Cambrian boundary. The central Australian basins are thus the products of events surrounding the assembly and dispersal of Rodinia.