Tectonics of an early Proterozoic geosuture: The Halls Creek orogenic sub-province, northern Australia

Abstract

The exposed elements of the Lower Proterozoic orogenic belts of the Halls Creek sub-province, Northern Australia, lie in fault zones which have suffered repeated tectonic activity at various times through the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic. The Halls Creek and King Leopold orogenic domains subtend an angle of 80° and are characterized by linear late tectonic batholithic complexes several hundred kilometres long but only a few tens of kilometres wide, reminiscent of those in Phanerozoic Cordilleran orogenies. The associated superposed folding and high temperature metamorphism are more akin to those in Phanerozoic collision orogenies. The sub-province is analyzed in the wider context of the North Australian orogenic province which was deformed, metamorphosed and intruded by granitic plutons approximately 1900-1800 Ma ago. In this province the Archaen basement was extended and broken into a mosaic of blocks, some of which (now largely concealed by younger Kimberley and McArthur basin sediments) retained a more positive character and fed sediment to intervening regions (such as the Pine Creek Geosyncline) which suffered greater extension and subsidence, but which retained a thinned Archaean basement. The Halls Creek Group was deposited in a trough to the south-east of the Kimberley island continent, and deposition was probably broadly contemporaneous with, and continuous with, that in the Pine Creek geosyncline. A volcanic—fine grained clastic—carbonate phase of marine deposition, following basin formation, is represented by the Biscay Formation. During the later phase of basin evolution widespread flysch facies (Olympio Formation), partly derived from the island continent, was deposited and is now preserved in low grade zones on both sides of the main belt of high strain and upper amphibolite to lower granulite facies metamorphism which displays recumbent folding and nappe tectonics with fold axes oblique to the major faults. No island arc compex or paired metamorphic belts are present in the orogenic belts, and it is concluded that the lithospheric extension and subsequent convergence did not involve the generation of oceanic crust or B-subduction. In the Halls Creek domain vergence is south-easterly across all zones and is related to oblique convergence leading to limited A-subduction of the basinal area in the south-east beneath the island continent to the north-west, accompanied by left-lateral strike-slip or transform fault movements on the north-trending major faults. The convergence generated the associated high temperature metamorphism and plutonism on the leading edge of the lower plate. A phase of upright folding (with trends varying continuously form E-W in the King Leopold belt to NNE-SSW in the Halls Creek belt) intervenes between the main recumbent deformation and metamorphism (ca 1920 Ma ago) and the emplacement of the late tectonic granite batholiths (ca 1840 Ma ago) which are fault controlled. The province represents a distinctive type of linear Proterozoic ensialic orogeny, not explicitly identified previously, and it needs to be distinguished both from true collision orogenies of the Phanerozoic, involving a Wilson Cycle, and from the areally extensive Proterozoic orogenies with which it is associated. Its essential characteristics are due to convergence between a small continent and an ‘oceanic’ area underlain by thin continental crust, resulting in limited A-subduction of the latter prior to crustal shortening.