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Thursday, 04 Feb 2021
Time: 6pm
Coopers Alehouse at the Earl, Pulteney Street Adelaide
Professor Alan Collins, University of Adelaide
Talk Title: The Greater McArthur Basin-an incredible sedimentary repository for understanding the evolution of life, oxygen and how Australia formed.
Talk outline:
The greater McArthur Basin is a vast Palaeoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic depositional system that covers all of Australia north of Tennant Creek (including the Birrindudu and McArthur Basin, the Tomkinson Province, Beetaloo Sub-basin and arguably the South Nicholson Basin, and really also the rocks of the Mount Isa Inlier). It’s northern extent is undefined, and likely covered North China and possibly even Siberia (both continents that lay adjacent to North Australia in the middle Proterozoic). It lies over the late Palaeoproterozoic orogens that make up the basement of the North Australian Craton and the ca. 1820 Ma transition into the greater McArthur Basin marks one of the most fundamental tectonic boundaries in the country, where orogens are supplanted by punctuated basin formation for the next 1.8 Ga. The region hosts the vast sedimentary-hosted metal deposits of Mount Isa and McArthur River as well as considerable metal exploration targets. It has been in the news recently due to the fascinating huge gas finds in the Beetaloo Sub-basin. This forms the largest on-shore hydrocarbon basin in the country with reserves to considerably expand over the next year or two. It is also the world’s oldest (nearly)commercial hydrocarbon field and has led to a real paradigm shift in understanding petroleum systems. BUT, on top of all this. The rocks in the basin system preserves evidence for what the world was like back in deep time as well as containing with its detritus, the hidden history of the amalgamation of the continent. We’ll explore some of these aspects of this incredible basin.
