The structural architecture of the central North West Shelf – insights from regional scale mapping of the Triassic succession

Created 16/10/2025

Updated 16/10/2025

The central North West Shelf has been the focus of a regional mapping program by Geoscience Australia targeting the Triassic succession. Resulting updates to the regional structural understanding are presented, showcasing variations in structural style across the region. The Triassic section is affected by fault sets with two predominant orientations across the study area: N-trending and NE-trending, with localised areas of NW-trending faulting. There is typically vertical separation of faulting between the upper Triassic and lower Triassic successions, resulting in different fault fabrics mapped on the top and base Triassic surfaces. In some areas major faults penetrate through the Mesozoic section and into the Paleozoic basement, forming features with significant displacement such as the Thouin Graben, Whitetail Graben, Naranco High, and the Barcoo Sub-basin half graben. Isochore maps reveal two Triassic depocentres separated by an area of thin Triassic extending from the inboard Bedout Sub-basin out to the western Rowley Sub-basin and NE Exmouth Plateau. This new mapping shows that there is a poor correlation between Triassic depocentres and existing basin boundaries, making it difficult to clearly describe regions of interest and their evolution. Greater integration of new structural insights into a regional structural framework is necessary to improve our understanding of the tectonostratigraphic evolution of the margin, and the stratigraphic and structural aspects of exploration risk. This abstract was submitted to/presented at the 2019 Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference (AEGC 2019) (https://www.aig.org.au/aegc-2019-data-to-discovery/)

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Field Value
Title The structural architecture of the central North West Shelf – insights from regional scale mapping of the Triassic succession
Language English
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/b1b4deb6-cf91-48ff-a92b-3f14ae6ae49b
Contact Point
Geoscience Australia Data
clientservices@ga.gov.au
Reference Period 01/01/2019 - 22/03/2019
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Geoscience Australia

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Geoscience Australia "The structural architecture of the central North West Shelf – insights from regional scale mapping of the Triassic succession". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/the-structural-architecture-of-the-central-north-west-shelf-insights-from-regional-scale-mappin