OFR 151.pdf - CRC LEME

SECTION 4 (GEOGRAPHIC BOUNDARIES AND TIME SLICES)
4.1 Geographic regions
Few Australian basins that preserve Cretaceous and/or Tertiary fossil floras fall neatly within
existing geographic or political boundaries. For example, the Surat Basin extends from southcentral
Queensland into central northern New South Wales and was flooded by the same mid
Cretaceous seas as the Eromanga Basin, which extends across much of southwestern
Queensland and south-east of the Northern Territory into northern South Australia. Over the
last 140 million years, Tasmania has moved from a land-locked position within East
Gondwana during the Cretaceous to a small mountainous island situated in middle latitudes of
the Southern Ocean during the Late Cenozoic.
The geographic regions used in this study have been selected to minimise overlap between the
major sedimentary basins whilst broadly conforming to changes brought about by rotation of
the continent relative to the geographic South Pole. These are;
1. North-West Australia, encompassing northwestern Australia north of the Pilbara
region (and the northern Carnarvon Basin), and regions eastwards to the Gulf of
Carpentaria.
2. North-East Australia, encompassing the Gulf of Carpentaria, Queensland and
northern New South Wales.
3. Central Australia, encompassing the southern half of the Northern Territory and the
northern half of South Australia.
4. South-West Australia, encompassing the Pilbara region (and the southern Carnarvon
Basin), and southwestern Western Australia.
5. Central southern Australia, encompassing the eastern Eucla Basin and southwestern
South Australia.
6. South-East Australia, encompassing central and southern New South Wales, Victoria
and southeastern South Australia.
7. Tasmania.
Larger basins and structural highs within each geographic region are listed in Table 4.
Table 4: Geographic regions
Major Basins Blocks and
Regions coastal/offshore inland Uplands
North-West Browse, Bonaparte, Canning, Money Shoals Canning Kimberley
South-West Bremer, Carnarvon, Eucla, Perth Officer Pilbara, Yilgarn
Central - (Alice Springs), Eromanga, Surat Arunta
central-southern Duntroon, Polda, St. Vincent Eyre, Torrens Gawler
North-East Carpentaria/ Karumba, Maryborough Casuarina, Duaringa, Styx, Yaamba N.E. Highlands
South-East Gippsland, Otway (including Torquay) Murray-Darling S.E. Highlands
Tasmania Bass, Sorell + onshore extensions (Midlands) Central Plateau
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