Mesozoic and late tertiary submarine fan sequences and their tectonic significance, Sumba, Indonesia

Abstract

The Indonesian island of Sumba occupies a critical zone which separates a “normal” subduction complex (Java Trench System) from a continent-island arc collision zone (Banda Arc). Sumba is considered by some authors to be a microcontinental fragment, although in this context its pre-fragmentation origin is uncertain. Detailed studies of the stratigraphy of Sumba, however, throw light on the origin and subsequent geological history of the island and surrounding areas. On available evidence, the oldest outcropping rocks are of Cretaceous age and locally contain a tropical Tethyan marine fauna. They comprise dark-coloured, sometimes carbonaceous and often volcanogenic mudstones, sandstones, gravels and diamictites, pervasively intruded by andesitic and dacitic dykes and locally intruded by granodiorite plutons. These sediments are siliclastic and appear to have had a continental provenance. The Cretaceous rocks in many areas compromise part of a major submarine fan complex which, at least in south-central Sumba, prograded towards the southwest and south. Shallow marine and non-marine Paleogene sediments and volcanic agglomerates lie unconformably above the uplifted, tilted and eroded Cretaceous strata. These are overlain in turn by the widely outcropping Miocene Sumba Formation, an oceanic sequence with island-arc affinities. Accessible outcrops of the Sumba Formation comprise platform carbonates with abundant reef developments in west Sumba, and a major submarine fan—pelagic chalk complex in east Sumba. The fan complex, which extends beneath the southern Savu Sea north of Sumba, is dominated by large-scale slumps, olistostromes and thin- and thick-bedded turbidites. Turbidite sands and gravels invariably are volcaniclastic, containing components derived from a typical inner (volcanic) arc complex. Paleocurrent indicators are difficult to find in the Sumba Formation, thus it is uncertain at this stage whether the volcaniclastic turbidites were derived from the present volcanic arc or from an undetermined source which may since have subsided. The portion of the fan complex which underlies east Sumba, however, has undergone vertical uplift since its emplacement of between one and several kilometres. Uplift is actively in progress at present, possibly due to underthrusting by northward-moving Australian continental crust. In this context the island of Sumba comprises an uplifted, north-tilted and subaerially exposed part of the forearc basin of the Indonesian Arc. This uplift can be related to initial stages of continental collision.