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IPA09-G-134
PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATIONThirty-Third Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2009
SUNDALAND: BASEMENT CHARACTER, STRUCTURE AND PLATE TECTONIC
DEVELOPMENT
Robert Hall*
Benjamin Clements*
Helen R. Smyth**
ABSTRACT
Sundaland is a heterogeneous region assembled by closure of Tethyan oceans and addition of
Gondwana fragments. Basement structure
influenced Cenozoic tectonics. Understanding
Cenozoic basins requires a knowledge of the
Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic history ofSundaland which is illustrated by a new plate
tectonic reconstruction. Continental blocks riftedfrom Australia during the Late Jurassic and
Early Cretaceous are now in Borneo, Java and
Sulawesi, not West Burma. The Banda and Argo blocks collided with the SE Asian margin
between 110 and 90 Ma. At 90 Ma the Woylaintra-oceanic arc collided with the Sumatra
margin and subduction beneath Sundaland
terminated. A marked change in deep mantle
structure at about 110°E reflects different
subduction histories north of India and Australia.They were separated by a transform that was
leaky from 90 to 75 Ma and slightly convergentfrom 75 to 55 Ma. From 90 Ma, India moved
rapidly north with north-directed subduction
within Tethys and at the Asian margin. Itcollided with an intra-oceanic arc at about 55
Ma, west of Sumatra, and continued north to
collide with Asia in the Eocene. Between 90 and45 Ma Australia remained close to Antarctica
and there was no subduction beneath Sumatra
and Java. During this interval Sundaland waslargely surrounded by inactive margins with
some strike-slip deformation and extension,except for subduction beneath Sumba–Sulawesi.
At 45 Ma Australia began to move north;
subduction resumed beneath Indonesia and hascontinued to the present. The deep NW-SE
structural trend of Borneo–West Sulawesi was
either inherited from Australian basement or
* SE Asia Research Group, Royal Holloway University of
London
** CASP, University of Cambridge
Cenozoic deformation. The structure of now-
subducted ocean lithosphere influenced the
Cenozoic development of eastern Indonesiaincluding important extension that began in the
Middle Miocene in Sulawesi and led to the
formation of the Banda Arc.
INTRODUCTION
SE Asia has grown by closure of Tethyan oceans between Gondwana and Asia, principally by
migration of continental blocks rifted from the
Gondwana margins, resulting in a mosaic of blocks separated by sutures which typically
include arc and ophiolitic rocks. The former positions of many of the blocks that now make
up Asia are still uncertain. Mesozoic and older
reconstructions are based on a variety of
evidence including that from palaeomagnetism,
lithofacies, faunal provinces, ages of magmatismand dating of structural events and have many
uncertainties. Reconstructing the intervening
Tethyan oceans is difficult since they havedisappeared by subduction. However, although
there has been disagreement about the original
location, ages of rifting and arrival of blocks (cf.Audley Charles, 1988 and Metcalfe, 1988) it is
now generally accepted that the continental core
of Sundaland was assembled from an Indochina–
East Malaya block and a Sibumasu block thatseparated from Gondwana in the Palaeozoic.
They amalgamated with the South and North
China blocks in the Triassic. The widespreadPermian and Triassic granites of the Tin Belt are
the products of associated subduction and post-
collisional magmatism (Hutchison, 1989). How
far east Sundaland extended is not clear. Thearea east of the Indochina–East Malaya block is
now largely submerged or covered with youngerrocks. Hamilton (1979) drew a NE-SW line from
Java to Kalimantan as the approximate southeast
boundary of Cretaceous continental crust and
showed much of the area offshore of Sarawak as
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Tertiary subduction complex, implying west
Borneo was part of Sundaland some time in theCretaceous. Metcalfe (1988, 1990, 1996)
separated a SW Borneo block from the
Indochina–East Malaya block along an
approximately N-S terrane boundary andsuggested it had a South China origin, as did his
Semitau block, and had moved south after rifting
in the Late Cretaceous, opening the proto-SouthChina Sea. Many workers, including Hamilton
(1979), Metcalfe (1988, 1990, 1996), Williams
et al. (1988) have suggested broadly south-directed subduction beneath Borneo during the
Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic and Metcalfe
(1996) shows most of the area north, east and
south of Borneo as accreted crust within which
are several small continental blocks.
There was another important episode of riftingaround northern Australia in the Jurassic
(Hamilton, 1979; Pigram & Panggabean, 1984;
Audley-Charles et al., 1988; Metcalfe, 1988;Powell et al., 1988). Several major blocks have
been interpreted to have rifted from northwest
Australia before India-Australia separation began and oceanic crust formed soon after
breakup is still preserved close to western
Australia. However, reconstructing the Indian
Ocean has proved difficult since a major part ofWharton Basin south of Java formed during the
Cretaceous Quiet Zone (Fullerton et al., 1989),
anomalies there are not well mapped, and muchof the ocean floor has been subducted at theSunda Trench. Magnetic anomalies remain off
west Australia but identifying the fragments that
rifted, leaving these anomalies, and their present position is controversial.
Luyendyk (1974) suggested that Borneo and
Sulawesi had rifted away from Australia but this
suggestion seems to have been mainly forgotten
or overlooked. A major rifted fragment was laternamed Mt Victoria Land (Veevers, 1988) or
Argoland (Powell et al., 1988). Ricou (1994)
suggested that Argoland corresponds to thePaternoster ‘plateau’ which he interpreted to
have collided with Borneo in the Paleocene.
Audley-Charles (1983, 1988) suggested
Argoland is now in south Tibet, but sinceMetcalfe (1990, 1996) it has most commonly
been identified with West Burma (Figure 1),
although this suggestion was considered byMetcalfe himself as “speculative”. Metcalfe
(1996) observed there was “as yet no convincing
evidence for the origin of this [West Burma]
block”, but correlated it with NW Australia, onthe basis of Triassic (quartz-rich) turbidites
above a pre-Mesozoic schist basement, and
speculated that the block might have provided a
source for quartz-rich sediments on Timor.Charlton (2001) preferred an Argoland in south
Tibet and suggested that West Burma wasAustralian but removed from the present Banda
Sea region (his Banda Embayment terrane) in
the Early Cretaceous. In contrast, Mitchell
(1984, 1992) argued the Triassic turbidites inBurma were deposited on the southern margin of
Asia, and Barber & Crow (2009) interpreted
West Burma as an extension of the West
Sumatra block, now separated from it by
opening of the Andaman Sea. For these authorsWest Burma has been part of SE Asia since the
Triassic.
There have been suggestions that north Sumatra
also includes continental fragments. Pulunggono& Cameron (1984) proposed that their Sikuleh
and Natal continental fragments could represent
blocks rifted from Sundaland or accreted to it.Metcalfe (1996) suggested these were
continental fragments with a NW Australian
origin. However, Barber (2000) and Barber &Crow (2005) reviewed these suggestions and
argued that there is no convincing evidence for
any microcontinental blocks accreted to the
margin of Sundaland in the Cretaceous. Theyinterpreted the Sikuleh and Natal fragments as part of the Woyla Terrane or Nappe which is an
intra-oceanic arc that was thrust onto the
Sumatran Sundaland margin in the midCretaceous. Mitchell (1993) had previously
suggested West Burma was part of the sameintra-oceanic arc thrust onto the Asian margin in
the late Early Cretaceous.
If the continental fragments rifted from theAustralian margin are not in West Burma or
Sumatra, where are they? Recent work suggests
they are now in West Sulawesi, East Java andBorneo. First we briefly summarise the
Cretaceous to Early Cenozoic tectonic character
of the Sundaland margin, the evidence for their present location of the continental fragments and
the timing of their rifting and arrival, and then
present a reconstruction that shows how these
fragments moved from Australia to SE Asia. Wethen outline some implications of the new
reconstructions.
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SUBDUCTION HISTORY
Until recently reconstructions of Gondwana
breakup and Asian accretion have been largely
schematic with maps for widely spaced time
intervals (e.g. Audley-Charles et al., 1988;Metcalfe, 1988, 1990, 1996). Heine et al. (2004),
Heine & Muller (2005) and Whittaker et al.
(2007) made the first detailed reconstructions ofthe ocean basins (Figure 2) and used
hypothetical Indian ocean anomalies to speculateon aspects of the Mesozoic history of SE Asia.
The reconstructions by Heine et al. (2004) and
Heine & Muller (2005) assume that West Burma
was rifted from the Australian margin. For thereasons discussed above, this interpretation is
rejected here. In addition, the movement of the
Argo fragment from Australia to West Burma
also requires exceptionally high spreading rates(approximately 11 cm/year between 156 and 136
Ma using maps of Heine & Muller, 2005) and
ignores the Woyla intra-oceanic arc.
Most previous reconstructions have assumed
subduction at the Sumatra-Java marginthroughout the Mesozoic and Early Cenozoic.
However, although there is good evidence from
magnetic anomalies for India’s rapid northward
movement in the Late Cretaceous and EarlyCenozoic, and hence subduction to the north of
India, magnetic anomalies south of Australiaindicate very slow separation of Australia and
Antarctica until about 45 Ma (Royer & Sandwell
1989). Hence there is no requirement for
subduction beneath Indonesia, and the only wayin which subduction could have been maintained
during the Late Cretaceous and Early Cenozoicis to propose a hypothetical spreading centre
between Australia and Sundaland which moved
northward until it was subducted, as suggested
by Heine et al. (2004) Heine & Muller (2005)and Whittaker et al. (2007). Ridge subduction is
often suggested to produce slab windows
associated with volumetrically orcompositionally unusual magmatism (e.g.Thorkelson & Taylor, 1989; Hole et al., 1995;
Thorkelson, 1996; Gorring & Kay, 2001). Such
a slab window should have swept westward beneath Java and Sumatra during the Late
Cretaceous and Paleocene according to the
Whittaker et al. (2007) model, but there is no
record of magmatism of this age in Java, andalmost none in Sumatra (Hall, 2009).
P wave and S wave seismic tomography also
indicate a different subduction history north ofIndia compared to that north of Australia. In the
mantle below 700 km there is a marked
difference in structure west and east of about
100°E (Hall et al., 2008). To the west there are aseries of linear high velocity anomalies trending
roughly NW–SE interpreted as subductedremnants of Tethyan oceans by van der Voo et
al. (1999). East of 100°E there is only a broadelliptical anomaly oriented approximately NE–
SW. The position of the deep lower mantle
anomaly fits well with that expected from
Indian–Australian lithosphere subductednorthward at the Java margin since about 45 Ma,
and proto–South China Sea lithosphere
subducted southward at the north Borneo trenchsince 45 Ma, with contributions from several
other subduction zones within east Indonesia,such as those associated with the Sulu Arc, andthe Sangihe Arc. There is no evidence for a
similar series of Tethyan oceans to those
subducted north of India, consistent with the
absence of subduction during the LateCretaceous and Paleocene. Therefore, one
assumption of this reconstruction is a cessationof subduction beneath the Sundaland margin
between 90 Ma and 45 Ma (Smyth et al., 2008;
Hall et al., 2008; Hall, 2009) caused by collision
of Gondwana fragments.
CONTINENTAL FRAGMENTS ANDTHEIR PAST AND PRESENT POSITIONS
East Java–West Sulawesi and SW Borneo
There have been many suggestions that therewas a collision between a Gondwana continental
fragment and the Sundaland margin in the mid
Cretaceous (e.g. Sikumbang, 1986, 1990; Hasan,1990, 1991; Wakita et al., 1996; Parkinson et al.,
1998) with a suture located in the Meratus
region. Geochemical evidence (Elburg et al.,
2003) and zircon dating (van Leeuwen et al.,
2007) indicate continental crust may lie beneathmuch of west Sulawesi and it has an Australian
origin (van Leeuwen et al., 2007). Recent studies
in East Java show that at least the southern partof the island is underlain by continental crust
(Smyth, 2005; Smyth et al., 2007, 2008). The
igneous rocks of the Early Cenozoic SouthernMountains volcanic arc contain Archaean to
Cambrian zircons similar to those of Gondwana
crust and suggest a west Australian origin for the
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fragment (Smyth et al., 2008). Continental crust
is also suggested to underlie parts of thesouthern Makassar Straits and East Java Sea
between Kalimantan and Java based on
basement rocks encountered in exploration wells
(Manur & Barraclough, 1994). Here we considerall these areas as a single fragment, East Java–
West Sulawesi, recognising that it may be a
number of smaller fragments, interpreted to haverifted from the West Australian margin, and
added to Sundaland in the mid Cretaceous at a
suture running from West Java towards theMeratus Mountains and then north (Hamilton,
1979; Parkinson et al., 1998).
The evidence for the origin of SW Borneo is
very limited. Metcalfe (1988, 1990, 1996) basedhis suggestions of an Asian origin on
palaeontological evidence from rocks found inSarawak and NW Kalimantan. There are rocks
with Cathaysian faunas and floras, but all are
found within the Kuching zone (Hutchison,2005) or NW Kalimantan Domain (Williams et
al., 1988) in, or closely associated with,
melanges and deformed ophiolites. We suggestthese rocks are not part of the SW Borneo block
but are fragments of ophiolitic and Asian
continental material accreted to it during the
Cretaceous. The SW Borneo block has itsnorthern limit at about the position of the Boyan
zone (Williams et al., 1988) and further south
there is very little to indicate its origin. Williamset al. (1988) imply that SW Borneo was part ofSundaland in the Cretaceous and intruded by
subduction-related granites formed in a
continuation of an east Asian magmatic arc. TheSchwaner Mountains are dominated by
Cretaceous igneous rocks which intrude a poorlydated metamorphic basement suggested to be
Permo-Triassic (e.g. Williams et al., 1988;
Hutchison, 2005). There are Devonian
limestones from the Telen River in the Kutai basin (Rutten, 1940) with a fauna resembling
that of Devonian limestones from the Canning
Basin (M.Fadel, pers. comm., 2009). There arealso alluvial diamonds and those from SE
Kalimantan resemble diamonds from NW
Australia (Taylor et al., 1990). SW Borneo is
interpreted here to be a continental block riftedfrom the West Australian margin, and added to
Sundaland in the Early Cretaceous. The northern
edge of the block would have been a south-dipping subduction zone as proposed by many
authors (e.g. Hamilton, 1979; Williams et al.,
1988; Tate, 1991; Hutchison, 1996; Moss,
1998). The suture is suggested to run south fromthe Natuna area along the structural lineament
named the Billiton Depression (Ben-Avraham
1973; Ben-Avraham & Emery 1973) and
originally interpreted by Ben-Avraham & Uyeda(1973) as a transform fault associated with
Cretaceous opening of the South China Sea.
The age of collision is interpreted from ages of
radiolaria in rocks associated with basic igneous
rocks that represent accreted oceanic crust andsedimentary cover (e.g. Wakita et al., 1994,
1998), the age of high pressure–low temperature
(HP–LT) metamorphic rocks in accretionary
complexes (Parkinson et al., 1998), ages of
subduction-related magmatism, ages of post-collisional rocks (Sikumbang, 1986, 1990;
Yuwono et al., 1988), and the widespread paucity of magmatism in Sumatra, Java and
Borneo after about 80 Ma until the Eocene (Hall,
2009). We suggest that the SW Borneo fragmentarrived at about 110 Ma, and the East Java–West
Sulawesi block collided at about 90 Ma.
Collision of the Woyla arc with the SumatranSundaland margin is suggested to have occurred
at the same time as the East Java–West Sulawesi
fragment docked.
Australian margin
SW Borneo is interpreted here as a blockseparated from the Banda embayment. This isconsistent with the limited evidence for its
origin, such as detrital diamonds, and its size. A
small Inner Banda block is shown on thereconstructions and is interpreted to move
mainly with the Banda block, but to have movedrelative to it during the collision of the Argo
block, and may now underlie part of Sabah and
northern West Sulawesi. This block is
speculative and could be dispensed with byallowing stretching of the main Banda block as it
rifted, and deformation after it docked, but
which is difficult to portray in a rigid platemodel.
The East Java–West Sulawesi block isinterpreted as the Argo block, consistent with
Palaeozoic to Archaean ages of zircons found in
igneous rocks in East Java, which would be
expected in detrital sediments in the offshorecontinuation of the Canning Basin, although it is
further west than proposed for West Sulawesi by
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van Leeuwen et al. (2007). The age of separation
of the blocks is interpreted from theirreconstructed positions in the West Australia
margin where oceanic crust is preserved. SW
Borneo must have accreted to Sundaland before
the arrival of the East Java–West Sulawesi blocksince it is inboard of it and therefore is
interpreted to have left the Australian margin
first. Its area and shape fit well into the Bandaembayment south of the Sula Spur and north of
Timor. The East Java–West Sulawesi block is
interpreted to have separated a little later asrifting propagated west and south (Pigram &
Panggabean, 1984; Powell et al., 1988; Fullerton
et al., 1989; Robb et al., 2005) where Late
Jurassic Indian ocean crust now remains in the
Argo abyssal plain.
Indian margin
The size of Greater India remains uncertain. Ali
& Aitchison (2005) reviewed this problem andconcluded that Greater India terminated at the
Wallaby Fracture where they suggested there
was continental crust beneath the Wallaby andZenith seamounts, in contrast to others (Colwell
et al., 1994; Robb et al., 2005) who suggested
that the seamounts are basaltic. This weakens
their argument that it is possible to define thelimit of Greater India by using the Wallaby-
Zenith Fracture Zone but is nonetheless the
preferred limit of Greater India for manyauthors. In contrast, other authors have tracedGreater India as far north as the Cape Range
Fracture Zone at the southern edge of the
Exmouth Plateau (e.g. Greater India 5 of Powellet al., 1988) or to the Platypus Spur at the
northern edge of the Exmouth Plateau (e.g. Lee& Lawver, 1995). Both the Ali & Aitchison
(2005) and Lee & Lawver (1995) limits to
Greater India are shown on the reconstructions
with the area between the Wallaby-ZenithFracture Zone and the Platypus Spur coloured by
a different shade of pink.
Pacific margin
The most difficult of all the margins to
reconstruct for the Mesozoic and Early Cenozoicis that of Asia, mainly because most of the
evidence is offshore. An east-facing Andean
margin linked to Pacific subduction iscommonly assumed. There was widespread
granite magmatism in mainland eastern China
during the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.
For the earlier part of this period a subductionorigin is generally accepted but during the
Cretaceous the situation is less clear. Cretaceous
granites are known in North China but it is
debated if they were formed at a subductionmargin (e.g. Lin & Wang, 2006; Li & Li, 2007;
Yang et al., 2007). In the SE China margin Jahnet al. (1976) argued that there was a Cretaceous
(120–90 Ma) thermal episode related to west-
directed Pacific subduction. In South China
around Hong Kong acid magmatism ceased inthe Early Cretaceous (Sewell et al., 2000). It is
not known if acid magmatism continued in a belt
to the east, because this area is offshore. Early
Cretaceous granites are reported from Vietnam
(Nguyen et al. 2004; Thuy et al. 2004) withyoungest ages of 88 Ma. If these are subduction-
related it implies a trench somewhere beneaththe present South China Sea. Zhou et al. (2008)
used geophysical data to propose that a Jurassic–
Early Cretaceous subduction complex can betraced south from Taiwan along the present
northern margin of the South China Sea and was
displaced to Palawan by opening of the SouthChina Sea. This restoration of the Early
Cretaceous margin would account for
subduction-related granites in Vietnam but it isunclear where to continue this belt, or if it did
continue south.
There is little evidence anywhere of subduction-related magmatism younger than about 80 Maand the Late Cretaceous was a period of rifting
and extension of the South China margin (e.g.
Taylor & Hayes, 1983; Zhou et al., 2008).Dredged continental crust (Kudrass et al., 1986)
from the Dangerous Grounds indicates the presence of a continental basement with
Cathaysian affinities. If the suture identified by
Zhou et al. (2008) is correctly located this
suggests addition of an Asian-origin block whichZhou et al. (2008) named Cathaysia. As noted
above, many authors have suggested west or
south-directed subduction beneath north Borneoin the Late Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic (e.g.
Hamilton, 1979; Taylor & Hayes, 1983;
Williams et al., 1988; Tate, 1991) althoughnotably Moss (1998) drew attention to problems
with a subduction-related interpretation for the
Rajang Group. He suggested that subduction had
ceased by about 80 Ma after arrival of micro-continental fragments now beneath the Luconia
Shoals and Sarawak leaving a remnant ocean
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and a foreland basin in northern Borneo. His
interpretation is preferred here.
It is impossible to reconcile the many different
interpretations, none of which provide
palaeogeographic reconstructions, but it isdifficult to do better simply because there is so
little evidence. In this model we have interpreted
a block similar to that of Zhou et al. (2008)although since the term Cathaysia is widely used
for South China we suggest it is named the
Dangerous Grounds block. It is arbitrarilymoved towards the Asian margin from 160 to 90
Ma to account for subduction melanges and
magmatism between South China, Vietnam and
NW Borneo.
METHODOLOGY
The reconstructions were made using the
ATLAS computer program (CambridgePaleomap Services, 1993) and a plate motion
model for the major plates as described by Hall
(2002). The model uses the Indian-Atlantichotspot frame of Müller et al. (1993) from 0 to
120 Ma and a palaeomagnetic reference frame
before 120 Ma using poles provided by A.G.
Smith (personal communication, 2001).Movements of Australia and India are from
Royer & Sandwell (1989). The model now
incorporates about 170 fragments, compared toapproximately 60 of Hall (1996) and 120 of Hall(2002). Here, the model is extended back to 160
Ma and a spreading history in the now-
subducted Tethys and Indian Oceans has beeninterpreted, based on the timing of rifting of
blocks from western Australia, now identified inSE Asia, and geological evidence from SE Asia
about timing of magmatism and collision.
On all reconstructions (Figures 3 to 10) areasfilled with green are mainly arc, ophiolitic, and
accreted material formed at plate margins. Areas
filled in cyan are submarine arc regions, hot spotvolcanic products, and oceanic plateaus.
Eurasian crust is coloured in shades of yellow.
Areas that were part of Gondwana in the Jurassic
are coloured in shades of red. To the west ofAustralia ocean currently remaining Cretaceous
ocean crust is shown in shades of blue; Jurassic
and other oceanic crust older than 120 Ma isshaded green. The northern limit of Greater
India 1 is the Wallaby-Zenith Fracture Zone
which is the limit to Greater India advocated by
Ali & Aitchison (2005), and is almost the sameas that used by Hall (2002). The northern limit
of Greater India 2 is aligned with the Platypus
Spur at the northern edge of the Exmouth
Plateau as suggested by Lee & Lawver (1995).The Greater India 5 suggested by Powell et al.
(1988) is at the Cape Range Fracture Zone at thesouthern edge of the Exmouth Plateau and is
approximately midway between these two
suggestions. Two symbols are shown in western
Australia on all the reconstructions: the yellowsquare labelled Pil is the northern edge of the
Archaean Pilbara block, and the white diamond
labelled Kim is the Kimberley diamond area.
RECONSTRUCTIONS
160 Ma to 110 Ma
Rifting in the Banda and Argo regions began atabout 160 Ma (Fullerton et al., 1989), possibly
due to initiation of south-directed subduction at
the north Gondwana margin. The rifting isinterpreted to have begun earlier in the east, and
propagated west (Figure 3). The reconstructions
use the simplest possible interpretation of oceancrust formation, generally with symmetrical
spreading. The orientation and age of the
magnetic anomalies was inferred from preserved
oceanic crust close to western Australia, and therequirement that the Banda and Argo fragmentsarrive at the Sundaland margin at 110 Ma and 90
Ma. This is essentially an Occam’s Razor
approach. It is possible that the actual history ofspreading was more complicated. South of the
Exmouth Plateau there is evidence for a complexhistory of spreading between about 132 Ma and
120 Ma (Figure 4) and there were repeated ridge
jumps to the continent–ocean boundary. If the
discovery of possible Late Jurassic anomalies inthe Wharton Basin (Barckhausen et al., 2008)
proves correct a more complex model will be
required although the age of ocean crust could be accounted for by relatively small
modifications to the model here, such as another
early India-Australia ridge jump, asymmetricalspreading at the mid-ocean ridge, or a small shift
in the position of the transform boundary that
developed after 90 Ma (see below).
No old oceanic crust is preserved in the Bandaembayment so the initial movement of the Banda
fragment is determined by the orientation and
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size of the Sula Spur, and implies a re-
orientation of the spreading direction at about150 Ma. The movement of the Argo fragment is
determined by the preserved magnetic anomalies
of the Argo abyssal plain and the assumption of
symmetrical spreading.
After separation of the Argo block the spreading
centre propagated west along the Greater Indiacontinent–ocean boundary to form the Woyla
Arc (Figure 3). The Woyla Arc is an LateJurassic–Early Cretaceous intra-oceanic arc
(Barber et al., 2005) estimated to have begun to
form at about 160 Ma and to have collided with
the Sumatra margin between 98 and 92 Ma (M.J.
Crow, pers. comm., 2008). This arc is speculatedto have continued west into another intra-
oceanic arc, here named the Incertus (Latin:
uncertain) Arc. A possible candidate for this arcis the Zedong terrane of southern Tibet
(Aitchison et al., 2007b) which is an intra-
oceanic arc formed in the Late Jurassic.
India began to separate from Australia at about
140 Ma (Figure 4). Oceanic crust remains offwest Australia today. There were a series of
ridge jumps (Robb et al., 2005) before the
inferred final spreading centre was establishedclose to the former Indian continent–ocean
boundary at 125 Ma. From 125 Ma the spreading
is assumed to have been symmetrical. The new
spreading centre between Australia and Indiaimplies a ridge-ridge-ridge triple junction with
the three spreading centres active until 110 Ma.
110 Ma to 90 Ma
The Woyla Arc and the Banda and Argo blocks
moved northwards as the subduction hinge
rolled back and the ocean south of them (TethysIII of Metcalfe, 1990; Ceno-Tethys of Metcalfe,
1996) widened (Figure 5). At 110 Ma the Banda
block finally collided with the Sundaland marginat the Billion Depression suture of Ben-Avraham(1973) which was the continuation of an
approximately NE-SE transform. The age of
arrival of this block, which became SW Borneo,is extremely uncertain. The block must have
arrived earlier than the East Java–West Sulawesi
block which was in place by about 90 Ma. There
is discontinuity in radiolaria ages in cherts fromthe Lubok Antu melange from Sarawak during
the Aptian-Albian (Jasin, 2000) which suggests
an interval between 125 and 100 Ma.
After collision of the SW Borneo block a new
subduction zone was initiated on its south side
which closed the ocean that remained betweenthe Woyla Arc–Argo and Sumatra–SW Borneo
(Figure 6). The Early Cretaceous active marginran from Burma through Sumatra into West Java
and continued northeast through SE Borneo into
West Sulawesi marked by ophiolites and HP–LT
subduction-related metamorphic rocks in CentralJava, the Meratus Mountains of SE Borneo and
West Sulawesi (Hamilton, 1979; Mitchell, 1993;
Parkinson et al., 1998). K-Ar ages of HP–LT
metamorphic rocks compiled by Parkinson et al.
(1998) from the Luk Ulo complex, Java rangefrom 124 to 110 Ma, and those from the Meratus
from 119-108 Ma, suggest subduction wasunderway on the south side of the SW Borneo
block by 108 Ma, thus indicating an older
collision. The 110 Ma age chosen is arbitrary butthere is no significant difference to the model if
an older age such as 120 Ma is used.
90 Ma change
The intra-oceanic Woyla Arc collided with theSumatran margin in the mid Cretaceous
(Figure 6) adding arc and ophiolitic rocks to the
southern margin of Sumatra (Barber et al., 2005)
at the same time as the Argo fragment accretedto form East Java (Smyth et al., 2008) and WestSulawesi (van Leeuwen et al., 2007). The age of
this collision is inferred to be approximately 90
Ma, although the collision could have beendiachronous, and any age between about 92 to
80 Ma is possible, as indicated by ages of chertsin melanges (e.g. Wakita et al., 1994, 1998) and
beginning of a widespread hiatus in magmatism
(e.g. Williams et al., 1988; McCourt et al., 1996;
Barber et al., 2005, Hall, 2009). The inferredsuture is a transpressional strike-slip boundary in
the region of the present Meratus Mountains.
The collision also coincides with the cessation of
acid magmatism in Vietnam (Nguyen et al.,
2004) and the interpreted change to extensional
tectonics in the South China margin (e.g. Zhouet al., 2008). The speculative Dangerous
Grounds block became part of the Asia margin
at about 90 Ma (Figure 6). It is from this timethat Sundaland is suggested to have become an
almost completely elevated and emergent
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continental region surrounded by inactive
margins.
The most important change at 90 Ma was the
termination of subduction beneath Sundaland
which did not resume until 45 Ma. Further west,north of India, there was also a change in the
subduction boundary to the south side of the
Incertus Arc with a polarity flip from SW- to NE-dipping. Although there was no subduction
beneath Sumatra and Java between 90 and 45
Ma, India moved rapidly north, especially fromabout 80 Ma, with north-directed subduction
within Tethys and at the Asian margin. The
difference in movement of Australia and India
was accommodated by a transform boundary.
90 to 45 Ma
The Indian and Australian plates were separated
by a broadly transform boundary from about 90
to 45 Ma (Figures 6 to 9) suggested to be theeastern “end of Tethys” from 90 Ma. It is
important to note that this is not a device created
for the model but a prediction that follows fromthe India-Australia plate motions determined by
Royer & Sandwell (1989). Between 90 and 75
Ma the boundary is almost pure strike-slip with
very slight extension of the order of a few 10s ofkilometres: a leaky transform (Figure 6 and 7).
From 75 to 55 Ma the boundary was convergent
(Figure 8), with the amount of convergenceincreasing northwards from about 10°S. This
implies either subduction of the Indian Plate beneath Australia or vice-versa. The amount is
small and would have been approximately 500
km at the northern end of the transform boundary. Since this region of the Indian and
Australia plates was entirely subducted beneath
north Sumatra before 10 Ma it is impossible to
know what was the polarity of this subduction
zone. However, it is possible that its finalremnants could be the enigmatic N-S striking
slab dipping steeply east that lies beneath Burma
(Ni et al., 1989; Satyabala, 1998, 2000; Guzman-Speziale & Ni, 2000) implying India subducted
beneath Australia.
The reconstructions also account for the very
early ages suggested for India-Asia collision (55
Ma or older) by collision between the Incertusintra-oceanic arc and the northern margin of
Greater India (Figure 8). Arc-continent collision
terminated subduction at this position, the arc
was carried north with India and is now in Tibet
as the Zedong terrane (Aitchison et al., 2007b).The subducted slab broke off, was over-ridden
by India, and the slab has now sunk deep in the
lower mantle where is visible as the prominent
linear anomaly trending NW–SE (van der Voo etal., 1999; Hall et al., 2008).
Because all the crust south of Sundaland is
oceanic and has been subducted it has been
difficult to judge the character of the Late
Cretaceous–Paleocene Sundaland margins because there are no anomalies and there is little
geological evidence on land. Many authors (e.g.
Audley-Charles et al. 1988; Metcalfe, 1988,
1990, 1996; Barber et al., 2005) have depicted
subduction schematically, or assumed it forreconstructions older than 45 Ma (e.g. Lee &
Lawver, 1995; Hall, 1996, 2002). As discussedabove, Heine et al (2004), Heine & Muller
(2005) and Whittaker et al. (2007) have made
reconstructions using hypothetical Indian Oceananomalies (Figure 2) but their predictions of the
nature of the Sumatra and Java boundaries are
inconsistent with the geology of Indonesia. Onewould generally expect significant igneous
activity to accompany subduction, and during
periods of slab window subduction there should be a record of abundant and possibly
compositionally unusual magmatism. It would
be unusual for igneous activity to cease for 35
million years along a subduction boundary morethan 2000 km in length. However, the period 80to 45 Ma is marked by an almost complete
absence of a volcanic and plutonic record in Java
and Sumatra. Furthermore, the Whittaker et al.(2007) model predicts quite different intervals of
extension and compression in the Sundalandmargins from those observed, for example in
Java the interval of 60 to 50 Ma “corresponds
with a known period of extension” when this is a
period with almost no geological record in Java,and they observe themselves that their
“reconstructions from 50 Ma show an advancing
upper plate in Sumatra suggesting that acompressive regime should have existed,
however extension is observed from geological
evidence”.
The predictions of the model presented here for
the Sundaland margins of Indonesia are very
different. For the period 90 Ma to 45 Ma therotation model is no different from that of Hall
(2002), but with the addition of the hypothetical
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anomalies that were constructed from the
inferred movement of the Banda–Argo–Woyla blocks it is possible to see and examine the
implications for the Sundaland margins. Around
most of Sundaland, except north of Sumatra,
there was no subduction during most of this period. Australia was not moving north and there
was an inactive margin south of Sumatra and
Java until 70 Ma (Figure 7). Thus, no significantigneous activity is expected. There could have
been some subduction in north Sumatra, west of
the India–Australia transform boundary, wherethere is a record of minor Paleocene volcanic
activity (Crow, 2005). From 70 Ma the model
predicts slight extension until 65 Ma and then
significant dextral strike-slip motion at the
Sumatra and Java margin. Further east it predicts NW-directed subduction beneath Sumba and
West Sulawesi between 63 Ma and 50 Ma(Figure 8). In the latest Cretaceous and
Paleocene there was calc-alkaline volcanism in
Sumba and West Sulawesi which has beeninterpreted as subduction-related (e.g. van
Leeuwen 1981; Hasan 1990; Abdullah et al.,
2000; Elburg et al., 2002; see Hall, 2009, forreview) which fits well with the model.
It is difficult to interpret how this latest
Cretaceous and Paleocene NW-directedsubduction zone continued north into the Pacific.
It is possible there was a west-dipping
subduction system very far from the Asianmargin where extension is recorded. There aremany small Late Cretaceous volcanic arc
fragments in places from Halmahera (Hall et al.,
1988), the Philippines (e.g. Lewis et al., 1982;Karig, 1983), the Philippine Sea (Klein &
Kobayashi, 1981; Tokuyama, 1985) toKamchatka (Levashova et al., 1998). At the
moment it is impossible to reconstruct the
Cretaceous–Paleocene West Pacific in detail but
it is clear that there were many intra-oceanic arcswithin the Pacific basin.
45 Ma to present
For the period after 45 Ma (Figure 9), there are
no major differences between the model
presented here and that of Hall (2002). Thereconstruction of the Proto-South China Sea has
changed slightly to incorporate new information.
The Luconia shelf is interpreted to have been inits present position relative to Sarawak but there
must have been some relative movement within
the Dangerous Grounds block to allow
subduction of the Proto-South China Sea between the Eocene and Early Miocene, perhaps
along the West Baram line (cf. Clift et al., 2008).
The deeper rift structures in Sarawak and
offshore Sarawak indicate that the Luconia shelfwas part of Sundaland by the Eocene
(Hutchison, 2005). There are also smalldifferences in the reconstruction of the Celebes
Sea and its subduction history to allow for
northward subduction beneath the Sulu Arc
(Hall & Wilson, 2000; Hutchison et al., 2000).The north Makassar Straits are interpreted to be
underlain by continental not oceanic crust (Hall
et al., 2009).
The reconstruction of the Banda region has beenimproved, based on detailed identification of
ocean floor anomalies (Hinschberger et al.,2000, 2001). The structure of the now-subducted
ocean floor south of Indonesia, and that of the
rifted NW Australian margin, probablyinfluenced the development of the region. The
oldest oceanic crust in the southern ocean
remained in the Banda embayment within theAustralian plate and had formed as the Banda
block rifted from Australia in the Late Jurassic.
At about 15 Ma (Figure 10) this old oceaniccrust arrived at the Java Trench and the trench
propagated east at the continent-ocean boundary
along the northern edge of the embayment. The
remaining oceanic lithosphere then fell awayinto the mantle and the subduction hinge rolled back into the embayment. This caused major
extension in the Australia–SE Asia convergent
zone, beginning in Sulawesi and continuing east,leading to the present complexities of the Banda
Arc. Oceanic crust older than 120 Ma iscoloured on the figures. The discontinuity
between spreading orientation north of NW
Australia is important as it was the place where
the Banda slab roll-back began. This explainsvery well why there is a discontinuity between
normal subduction in the Sunda Arc and roll-
back in the Banda Arc.
DISCUSSION
The SW Borneo–Sundaland boundary is the
Billiton depression (Ben-Avraham, 1973) and
was a major strike-slip suture (Figures 5 and 6).
The east boundary of the SW Borneo block isalso a strike-slip boundary with the Pacific from
140 to 90 Ma, and the mainly strike-slip
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character of the boundary with E Java–West
Sulawesi during the final stages of convergence before 90 Ma may explain why the Meratus
suture has been reactivated as an elongate
mountain belt resembling a flower structure
within SE Kalimantan.
There have been many previous suggestions of
Gondwana continental crust beneath WestSulawesi. We propose that East Java, SW
Borneo, and possibly parts of Sabah, may also
be underlain by continental crust of Australianorigin. This proposal provides two possible
explanations for the deep structural trends, now
oriented approximately NW-SE, that are often
identified across the whole of Borneo and
commonly traced southeastwards into Sulawesiand north towards the Dangerous Grounds.
Many of these features show no sign of having been active faults during most of the Cenozoic,
some may have been reactivated at intervals
during the Cenozoic and most are not activefaults at present, although they are commonly
represented in this way. However, they do
appear to have influenced the development ofthe region during the Cenozoic, and there are
indications of changing basement character,
depth to basement and changes in sedimentary
thicknesses across them. One possibleexplanation for them is that they are basement
structures inherited from Australia where there
are deep and old structures that can be tracedoffshore across the NW Shelf and westernAustralia. An alternative, or additional,
explanation is that these faults were active
during the phase of Late Cretaceous–Paleocenesubduction beneath Sumba and West Sulawesi
(Figure 8). Their orientation means that theymay have formed or been reactivated at this
stage as they are parallel to the convergence
direction. From 45 Ma there was a change in
convergence direction as Australia began tomove north and their orientation would have
meant that movement on them ceased. This
would explain why they influence laterdevelopment but, in most cases, do not appear to
have been active structures during most of the
Cenozoic.
The Walanae Fault in SW Sulawesi appears to
be another fundamental structure, in this case
formed at or close to the continental marginwhich from the Late Eocene to Early Miocene
was a transform boundary (Figure 9) in our
model, an interpretation supported by geological
evidence from South Sulawesi (T.M. vanLeeuwen, pers. comm., 2007). The
reconstructions show that this fault may be
traced north along the Sundaland margin and this
became the Palu-Koro Fault. We suggest that both of these are ancient faults that have been
repeatedly reactivated, as appears to be the casefor many other major faults in Indochina and
East Asia.
The great age of ocean crust in the Bandaembayment induced massive extension in
eastern Indonesia when it arrived at the Java
Trench in the Miocene (Figure 10). There are
many manifestations of this, including
magmatism from western Sulawesi eastwards,metamorphic ages in the Banda Arc,
development of young ocean basins, anddevelopment of the enigmatic and exceptionally
deep basin of the Weber Deep. We suggest that
Sulawesi geology is open to a reinterpretationinvolving important extension from the Middle
Miocene, which caused crustal thinning before
the Pliocene thickening which continues today,and which led to the formation of the inter-arm
basins of Gorontalo Bay and Bone Gulf.
CONCLUSIONS
In our model there is no continental West Burma
block. The Argo and Banda blocks account forthe areas of continental crust rifted from theAustralian margin and fit well into the areas
where there is now evidence for continental
basement in Indonesia. The East Java–WestSulawesi block is not underlain by Archaean
basement as suggested by Smyth et al. (2007,2008) but by sediments (up to Triassic age)
derived from Archaean, Proterozoic and
Palaeozoic basement in western Australia. This
better accounts for the range of ages in thezircon data and with the existence of long-lived
structures and pathways feeding sediment to the
offshore Canning Basin.
The Woyla Arc initiated close to the northern
edge of India. If the initial rifting did occuralong the continent–ocean boundary there could
be some small microcontinental fragments
brought north with it, such as Sikuleh and Natal,
but this is not a requirement and we followBarber & Crow (2005) in assuming there are
none. The arc collided with the Sumatra margin
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at about 90 Ma. The life of the Woyla arc fits
well with what is known of its history (M.J.Crow, pers. comm., 2008) and this feature of our
model could be tested by palaeomagnetism as
suggested by Barber et al. (2005).
The continuation of the Woyla Arc into our
proposed Incertus Arc fits very well with the
position of the major linear high velocityanomaly in the deep mantle interpreted as a
subduction zone that India has passed over (van
de Voo, 1999; Aitchison et al., 2007a; Hall et al.,2008). The 90 Ma collision of the Woyla arc in
Sumatra caused a reversal of arc polarity and a
change in subduction direction which then led
India to collide with the arc at about 55 Ma, at
the time identified by Leech et al. (2005) butwhich was not the India–Asia collision they
inferred. This came later at a time that remainsthe subject of dispute (e.g. Rowley, 1996;
Aitchison et al., 2007a)
The 90 Ma collisions of the Woyla Arc and the
Argo block terminated subduction at most of the
Sundaland margins. Dynamic topographicresponses to the termination of subduction and
collisional thickening both contributed to
creating a large elevated and emergent continent
from the mid Cretaceous, increasing the area ofSundaland which had been emergent from the
Late Triassic. The period from about 90 to 45
Ma was mainly a time of erosion, non-deposition, and sediment recycling. Subductiondid not resume until 45 Ma, as Australia began
to move north, and sedimentary basins began to
form across the region in response to the newregional stresses (Hall & Morley, 2004; Hall,
2009) that then developed.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We are especially grateful to the consortium of
oil companies who have supported our projects
in SE Asia for many years. We thank colleaguesin Indonesia at the Pusat Survei Geologi
Bandung, Lemigas, Indonesian Institute of
Sciences, and Institut Teknologi Bandung, and
many colleagues in the UK, Europe and SEAsia. We thank Alan Smith and Lawrence Rush
for assistance with reconstruction problems, and
Mike Audley-Charles, Tony Barber, MikeCottam, Mike Crow, Charles Hutchison, Mike
Sullivan and Theo van Leeuwen for suggestions
and discussion of many of the ideas in this
paper.
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Figure 1 – Reconstructions at 165 Ma and 80 Ma modied from Wakita & Metcalfe (2005). These
interpret the Argo block as rifted from the NW Australian margin in the Late Jurassic and
added to Asia as the West Burma block in the Cretaceous. SW Borneo is interpreted as
separated from Asia during the Cretaceous by formation of the Proto-South China Sea
(Proto SCS).
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Figure 2 – A. Reconstruction at 150 Ma modied from Heine & Muller (2005). The West Burma and
Sikuleh blocks are interpreted as rifted from NW Australia in the Late Jurassic and added
to SE Asia in the Cretaceous. Abbreviations are: BE Banda Embayment, BH Bird’s Head,
ExP Exmouth Plateau, M Meratus Block, ScP Scott Plateau, WB West Burma. B.
Reconstruction at 75–70 Ma modied from Whittaker et al. (2007) shows the NE-SW
spreading centre interpreted to have been subducted beneath the SE Asia promontory
between 70 and 20 Ma as it moved west. NE arrows indicate India plate motion and
WSW arrows show Sundaland motion for the 75–70 Ma interval. Colour indicates
inferred age of ocean crust.
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Figure 3 – Reconstruction at 150 Ma. The Banda blocks had separated forming the Banda
embayment and leaving the Sula Spur. The Argo block separated slightly later
accompanied by a reorientation of spreading in the Banda embayment. Spreading
propagated west and followed a line which may have been the continent-ocean boundary
of Greater India 2 to form the Woyla Arc. The arc and continental fragments moved away
from the Gondwana margins as the subduction hinge rolled back.
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Figure 4 – Reconstruction at 135 Ma. India had begun to separate from Australia which still remained
xed to Antarctica. Spreading in the Ceno-Tethys was predominantly oriented NW-SE
and the Banda, Argo blocks and the Woyla Arc moved towards SE Asia as the Ceno-Tethys
widened. ExP Exmouth Plateau, Pil Pilbara, Kim Kimberley.
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Figure 5 – Reconstruction at 110 Ma. There were numerous ridge jumps as India separated from
Australia. The Argo block docked with Sundaland along a strike-slip suture at the BillitonDepression. Spreading at the Ceno-Tethys NW-SE mid-ocean ridge ceased and the NE-
SW India-Australia spreading centre propagated north. West of the triple junction south
of the Argo block there was subduction of the older Ceno-Tethys. There was also
subduction south of Sumatra and SW Borneo.
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Figure 6 – Reconstruction at 90 Ma. The Argo block docked with SW Borneo along the strike-slip
Meratus suture, forming East Java and West Sulawesi, and the Woyla Arc docked withthe Sumatra margin of Sundaland. The collisions terminated subduction. However,
India continued to move north by subduction beneath the Incertus Arc which required
formation of a broadly N-S transform boundary between the Indian and Australian plates.
Australia began to separate from Antarctica but at a very low rate.
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Figure 7 – Reconstruction at 70 Ma. India was now moving rapidly north with rapid spreading to
the south. There were large offsets of the ridge by transform faults, some of which arestill preserved in the Wharton Basin between the 90E Ridge and the Investigator Fracture.
There was no signicant relative motion between Australia and Sundaland and no
subduction beneath Sumatra and Java.
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Figure 8 – Reconstruction at 55 Ma. Australia–Sundaland motion was slightly convergent causing
subduction along the eastern Sundaland margin beneath Sumba and West Sulawesi. Thissubduction may have continued north outboard of the Asian margin. The Australian–
Sundaland plate boundary was a dextral strike-slip zone south of Java and was a
transtensional strike-slip zone south of Sumatra. The Incertus Arc and the northern
margin of Greater India had collided and the arc was carried north on the Indian Plate.
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Figure 9 – Reconstruction at 45 Ma. Australia began to move rapidly away from Antarctica. Australia
and India became part of a single plate, possibly reecting the earliest India and Asiacontact, but alternatively as a result of changes in plate motions in the Pacic. At about
this time there were arc-continent collisions in New Guinea, and major changes in the
West Pacic, forming marginal basins such as the Celebes Sea and Philippine Sea. South-
directed subduction of the Proto-South China Sea began below Borneo.
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Figure 10 – Reconstruction at 15 Ma. Ocean crust older than 120 Ma remained in the Banda
embayment and arrived at the Java trench causing the trench to move eastwards along thecontinent–ocean boundary south of the Sula Spur. Almost all of this crust had been
subducted except the area with many anomalies in the Argo abyssal plain and off western
Australia.