Origin and motion history of the Philippine Sea Plate

Abstract

The Philippine Sea Plate is the one major plate whose Tertiary motion is poorly constrained and whose origin is problematical. Its southern boundary is the Sorong Fault system which is part of a major left-lateral fault system at the northern margin of the Australian plate. The southern part of the plate in eastern Indonesia has been neglected in most syntheses but includes some of the oldest rocks within the plate which are separated from remnant arcs of the Daito Ridge province of the northern Philippine Sea by the West Philippine Central Basin. The east Indonesian islands of the Halmahera-Waigeo region contain a good Mesozoic and Tertiary stratigraphic record indicating a long arc history for the southern part of the plate. New palaeomagnetic data from these islands define two sub-areas: an area forming part of the Philippine Sea Plate north of the Sorong Fault, and an area within the Sorong Fault system. The area north of the fault records a long-term clockwise rotation history whereas that within the fault zone records local rotations interpreted as due to deformation at the plate edge. Rocks of Philippine Sea Plate origin within both areas record similar latitudinal shifts. The rotation of the area north of the Sorong Fault is considered to represent the motion of the southern part of the Philippine Sea Plate. The new data indicate large Tertiary clockwise rotations similar to earlier suggestions for other parts of the plate but record a discontinuous and more complex motion history than previously suggested. For the southern part of the plate there was 40° rotation with northward translation between 0 and 25 Ma, no significant rotation between 25 and 40 Ma, and there was 50° rotation with southward translation between 40 and 50 Ma. We show that the new palaeomagnetic data form part of a single set with earlier palaeomagnetic data from elsewhere in the plate. The translation history of the southern part of the plate in eastern Indonesia can be reconciled with northward motions recorded elsewhere and can be used to determine rotation poles for the plate (15°N, 160°E for the interval 5–25 Ma, and 10°N, 150°E for the interval 40–50 Ma). Reconstructions based on these poles predict that at ∼ 45 Ma the Palau-Kyushu Ridge had a WNW-ESE orientation which is very different from that postulated by many models used to explain the widespread boninite volcanism in the Izu-Bonin-Marians forearc at this time. The long arc history of the southern part of the plate and the reconstructions based on the rotation poles calculated from the palaeomagnetic data favour an origin for the West Philippine Basin by spreading in a backarc basin.