Tertiary evolution of the Eastern Indonesia Collision Complex

Abstract

Eastern Indonesia is the zone of interaction between three converging megaplates: Eurasia, the Pacific and Indo-Australia. The geological basis for interpretations of the Tertiary tectonic evolution of Eastern Indonesia is reviewed, and a series of plate tectonic reconstructions for this region at 5 million year intervals covering the last 35 million years is presented. The oldest reconstruction predates the onset of regional collisional deformation. At this time a simple plate configuration is interpreted, consisting of the northward-moving Australian continent approaching an approximately E–W oriented, southward-facing subduction zone extending from the southern margin of the Eurasian continent eastwards into the Pacific oceanic domain. Beginning at about 30 Ma the Australian continental margin commenced collision with the subduction zone along its entire palinspastically-restored northern margin, from Sulawesi in the west to Papua New Guinea in the east. From this time until ca 24 Ma, the Australian continent indented the former arc trend, with the northward convergence of Australia absorbed at the palaeo-northern boundary of the Philippine Sea Plate (the present-day Palau-Kyushu Ridge). At ca 24 Ma the present-day pattern of oblique convergence between the northern margin of Australia and the Philippine Sea Plate began to develop. At about this time a large portion of the Palaeogene colliding volcanic arc (the future eastern Philippines) began to detach from the northern continental margin by left-lateral strike slip. From ca 18 Ma oblique southward-directed subduction commenced at the Maramuni Arc in northern New Guinea. At ca 12 Ma the Sorong Fault Zone strike-slip system developed, effectively separating the Philippines from the Indonesian tectonic domain. The Sorong Fault Zone became inactive at ca 6 Ma, since which time the tectonics of eastern Indonesia has been dominated by the anticlockwise rotation of the Bird’s Head structural block by some 30–40°. Contemporaneously with post-18 Ma tectonism, the Banda Arc subduction–collision system developed off the northwestern margin of the Australian continent. Convergence between Indo-Australia and Eurasia was accommodated initially by northward subduction of the Indian Ocean, and subsequently, since ca 8 Ma, by the development of a second phase of arc-continent collision around the former passive continental margin of NW Australia.