Oligocene–Miocene carbonates and their role for constraining the rifting and collision history of the Dangerous Grounds, South China Sea

Abstract

The attenuated continental crust of the Dangerous Grounds is located in the southeastern part of the South China Sea. It was affected by unconformities as identified by several authors (Cullen et al., 2010; Hinz and Schlüter, 1985; Hutchison, 2010; Hutchison and Vijayan, 2010). In the northeastern Dangerous Grounds, a prominent reflector in seismic data is associated with the top of a widespread Oligocene to Early Miocene (18–20 Ma) carbonate platform. This reflector and the underlying carbonates can be used to constrain the timing of the unconformities and the rifting history of the Dangerous Grounds. By carefully interpreting seismic reflection lines we trace the platform carbonates based upon their appearance in the seismic image. This platform is continuous in the Palawan–Borneo trough and gets patchy toward the Dangerous Grounds. In the Dangerous Grounds the image of this key reflector changes and here it merely forms the top of a clastic layer. Carbonates remain abundant but mainly as isolated reefs that grew on top of tilted fault blocks. In the southwestern Dangerous Grounds the prominent unconformity sealing the tectonic activity is known as the Middle Miocene Unconformity. This in fact is an Early Miocene unconformity, which represents a sequence boundary in the Borneo–Palawan trough and in various parts of the Dangerous Grounds, while in other parts of the Dangerous Grounds, it represents a major angular unconformity.The unconformity characteristics supplemented with tentative ages indicate that Luconia and the southern Dangerous Grounds were sub-aerial during the Early Miocene, while the Reed Bank, the northern Dangerous Grounds and parts of the central Dangerous Grounds were mostly submerged except for some islands concentrated on the western edge of the Borneo–Palawan trough. This trough is interpreted as a foreland basin where the flexural forebulge provided shallow marine conditions that promoted reef growth. As the carbonate deposition migrated from the Borneo–Palawan trough toward the Dangerous Grounds we suggest that the flexural forebulge provided shallow water conditions for further reef growth on the eastern Dangerous Grounds.