Townsville Basin
Entity ID: 22406 Compiled by: Taubert, S. Year: 2002 Status: Defined
Last Revised: 2013
Rank: Province Type: sedimentary Subtype: rift Location: QLD, CSIT Off-shore
Synonyms: Townsville Trough Symbol: NA
Minimum age: Recent Age method: inferred, biostratigraphic correlation
Maximum age: Late Jurassic Age method: inferred, seismic interpretation
Summary: The Jurassic to Recent Townsville Basin is a large, offshore basin that formed as an east-west trending rift between the Marion and Queensland Plateau, containing over 6500 m of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments.
Attributes:
Area (square kilometres): 30000 State: QLD State: CSIT Minimum present water depth (m): 200 Maximum present water depth (m): 2000 Main rock types: carbonate sediments and sedimentary rocks Main rock types: siliciclastic sediments and sedimentary rocks Main depositional environment: marine and non-marine Maximum sediment thickness (m): 6500 Present crustal setting: continental Country: AUS
Parent: No data
Child Provinces: No data
Relationships:
Adjoins - Marion Plateau [To the south.], Queensland Basin [Western Townsville Basin grades into southern Queensland Basin.], Queensland Plateau
Constituent units:
Events: No data
Mineral Deposits: No data
Key Reference: Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Symonds, P.A., Fellows, M.E., Scott, D.L. 1994, Structural and stratigraphic evolution of the Townsville Basin, Townsville Trough, offshore northeastern Australia, Australian Geological Survey Organisation. Record, 1994/50, (Refid:12656)
Comments: No data
Overview: The Townsville Basin is an east-west trending extensional basin located between the Queensland and Marion Plateaus offshore northeast Queensland, in water depths of 200 m to 2000 m. The basin is 450 km long and 20 to 120 km wide, underlies the bathymetric Townsville Trough, and is subdivided into several sub-basins. The basin fill occurs as two main megasequences that reflect the basin evolution from a rift basin with isolated depocentres to a sag basin with a more widespread distribution. The maximum sediment thickness is about 6.5 km. The oldest sediments are contained in a generally thin Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous early synrift sequence with considerable variation in spatial distribution, and likely to consist of terrigenous deposits derived from the adjacent plateaus and intra-basin highs. This is overlain by up to 2 km of a more widespread synrift megasequence, deposited in a variety of environments, and inferred to be no younger than Paleocene in age. A Cainozoic sag-phase megasequence up to 3.8 km thick consists of drape fill clastics overlain by mainly carbonates. The Townsville Basin formed through oblique northwest to southeast extension resulting in a half-graben morphology. This early rifting event was separate to and predated extension related to later Coral and Tasman Sea opening. However, a second rift phase in the Early to Late Cretaceous may be related to these regional extensional events. Multiple reactivation events occurred throughout the Cainozoic. No wells have been drilled in the Townsville Basin, and its petroleum prospectivity is speculative. The western part of the basin lies within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, in which petroleum exploration is prohibited.
Images: No data
Other media: No data
Source Information:
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Symonds, P.A., Davies, P.J., Parisi, A., 1983, Structure and stratigraphy of the central Great Barrier Reef., BMR Journal of Australian Geology and Geophysics, 8, 277-291. (Refid: 4259)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Bureau of Resource Sciences, 1996, Oil and gas resources of Australia 1995, Canberra, Bureau of Resource Sciences, 185. (Refid: 12539)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Gray, A.R.G., 1990, A summary of the petroleum potential of the offshore Queensland continental margin, Queensland Government Mining Journal, 91, 489-494. (Refid: 12541)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Sdrolias, M., Muller, R.D., Gaina, C., 2001, Plate tectonic evolution of eastern Australian marginal ocean basins., Eastern Australasian Basins Symposium 2001, 227-237. (Refid: 12544)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Willcox, J.B., 1981, Petroleum prospectivity of Australian marginal plateaus, AAPG Studies in Geology, 12, 245-272. (Refid: 12631)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Cotillon, P., Rousselle, B., Courtinat, B., Crumirere, J.P., 1994, Evolution of sediment fluxes from the middle Miocene to present at ODP Site 817 (Townsville Basin, northeastern Australia) as a record of regional palaeogeographic events, Marine Geology, 121;3-4, 265-291. (Refid: 12655)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Symonds, P.A., Davies, P.J., 1988, Structure, stratigraphy, evolution and regional framework of the Townsville Trough and Marion Plateau region. Research cruise proposal, project 9131.11., Bureau of Mineral Resources, Record, 88/ 48, . (Refid: 49606)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Symonds, P.A., 1997, Tectonostratigraphic evolution of the Townsville Basin, Townsville Trough, offshore northeastern Australia, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 44, 799-817. (Refid: 12658)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Symonds, P.A., Capon, D., Davies, P.J., Pigram, C.J., Feary, D.A., 1987, Structural style of the Townsville Trough and its implications for the development of the northeast Australian margin, Extended Abstracts - Applied Extension tectonics, 16th BMR Research Symposium, Canberra, 24th-26th November, 1987. Bureau of Mineral Resources, Australia, Record 1987/51, 1987/51, 165-172. (Refid: 12659)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Symonds, P.A., Colwell, J.B., Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Willcox, J.B., Hill, P.J., 1996, Mesozoic rift basin development off eastern Australia, Abstracts - Geological Society of Australia, 43, 528-542. (Refid: 12660)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Fritsch, J., Schluter, H.-U., Symonds, P.A., 1984, Continental margin around western Coral Sea Basin: structural elements, seismic sequences & petroleum geological aspects. IN Watson S.T.(ed) - Transactions of 3rd circum-Pacific energy & minerals conf. Hawaii 1982., American Association of Petroleum Geologists, 1v, p243-252. (Refid: 39703)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Falvey, D.A., Symonds, P.A., Colwell, J.B., Willcox, J.B., Marshall, J.F., Stagg, H.M.J., 1990, Australia's deepwater frontier petroleum basins and play types., APEA Journal, 30(1), p239-262. (Refid: 42075)
- FOR PROVINCE-GENERAL: Struckmeyer, H.I.M., Symonds, P.A., Fellows, M.E., Scott, D.L., 1994, Structural and stratigraphic evolution of the Townsville Basin, Townsville Trough, offshore northeastern Australia, Australian Geological Survey Organisation. Record, 1994/50, . (Refid: 12656)
