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A new passive margin model for the Neoproterozoic and Early Palaeozoic of SE Australia derived from seismic studies of Tasmania

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

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The island of Tasmania in southeast Australia has a number of geological elements. The relationship between these elements is largely obscured by younger cover of the Tasmania Basin, including extensive dolerites which limit the ability of potential field techniques to map basement. Therefore the development of a robust tectonic model for Tasmania has been inhibited. A seismic program was undertaken to map the large scale structure of Tasmania at depth. Deep seismic profiles were collected offshore along the entire coastline; the airguns were also recorded at a number of seismographs deployed across the island, allowing low resolution 3D tomographic imaging. Short reflection profiles were also recorded onshore across structures which could not be imaged by the offshore profiling. The Proterozoic basement in the northwest and in the Tyennan Block in the core of the island is unreflective, except for mostly east dipping reflectors which project to the surface at block boundaries. In the east, however, the lower crust is broken into rotated blocks whose boundary faults are reflective, indicating progressively greater crustal extension of the Tyennan Block to the northeast, where a reflective lower crust is interpreted to be highly extended continental crust with passive margin sediments and possibly fragments of oceanic crust. The apparently complex geology of Tasmania therefore fits into a Simple tectonic model in which several episodes of crustal extension occurred before oceanic crust formed to the northeast. The extended crust has now been inverted, probably from the northeast.

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Title A new passive margin model for the Neoproterozoic and Early Palaeozoic of SE Australia derived from seismic studies of Tasmania
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/1822f2c6-fc8b-4be9-b6fa-81798db05e75
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 22/04/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    [
      [
        144.0,
        -44.0
      ],
      [
        150.0,
        -44.0
      ],
      [
        150.0,
        -40.0
      ],
      [
        144.0,
        -40.0
      ],
      [
        144.0,
        -44.0
      ]
    ]
  ],
  "type": "Polygon"
}
Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "A new passive margin model for the Neoproterozoic and Early Palaeozoic of SE Australia derived from seismic studies of Tasmania". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/a-new-passive-margin-model-for-the-neoproterozoic-and-early-palaeozoic-of-se-australia-derived-