The Glenloth Granite is an icon of South Australian geology, having been the site of some of the earliest gold workings in the central portion of what is now known as the Gawler Craton and the subject of some of the first radiometric age determinations in the 1960's. The Glenloth Granite forms part of the Neoarchaean to earliest Palaeoproterozoic belt of supracrustals and associated intrusives known as the Mulgathing Complex, which includes mafic to ultramafic (komatiitic) volcanics. Inferred to be syn-tectonic in nature in the original 1:250 000 scale mapping of the region, new SHRIMP data shows that the Glenloth Granite was emplaced at 2508 +/- 2 Ma, during period of magmatism that predates the ca. 2470 - 2420 Ma Sleafordian Orogeny. This orogenic event reworked the Glenloth Granite in to magmatitic gneiss and is responsible for two main generations of metamorphic zircon growth at 2453 +/- 4 Ma and 2427 +/- 3 Ma, likely reflecting initial prograde metamorphism followed by migmatite formation during biotite dehydration reactions, as has been documented from elsewhere in the Mulgathing Complex.

Beginning in the Archean, the continent of Australia evolved to its present configuration through the accretion and assembly of several smaller continental blocks and terranes at its margins. Australia usually grew by convergent plate margin processes, such as arc-continent collision, continent-continent collision or through accretionary processes at subduction zones. The accretion of several island arcs to the Australian continent, through arc-continent collisions, played an important role in this process, and the geodynamic implications of some Archean and Proterozoic island arcs recognised in Australia will be discussed here.

The Mount Painter Province is located in the northern Flinders Ranges, South Australia and comprises deformed Proterozoic metasedimentary and igneous rocks.

Australia's North West Shelf (NW Shelf) has been the premier hydrocarbon exploration and production province for over 30 years. Despite the large number of geological studies completed in this region, numerous geological questions remain to be answered such as the provenance of reservoir units and how this relates to reservoir quality, extent and correlation. Submission of offshore sample material by explorers on the NW Shelf has allowed U-Pb age results to be determined; providing insights into the potential provenance and sedimentary transport pathways of various Triassic to Cretaceous reservoir facies. Initial results reveal that the proximal Pilbara, Yilgarn and Kimberly cratons were not major proto-sources during the Middle to Upper Triassic. The prospective, Mungaroo Formation appears to display a Triassic volcanic signature; the source of which remains enigmatic, but numerous grain characteristics suggest a source proximal to the Exmouth Plateau. Many samples show a Gondwana Assemblage age. Sediment sources of this age are absent on the Australian continent suggesting a distal origin - most likely the Antarctic and Indian blocks. Transport pathways, for the Triassic Mungaroo Formation, are interpreted as possibly northward through a proto-Perth Basin or north-westward through the Gascoyne-Hamersley-Pilbara regions. Other results suggest subtle differences in provenance of the sediments between the Exmouth Plateau and Rankin Platform, and that the provenance signatures of the Bonaparte, Canning and Perth basins show distinctively different provenance signatures.

Legacy product - no abstract available

This record presents a compilation of new zircon U-Pb SHRIMP geochronological results (total of 17 samples) from the east Arunta region, the Litchfield Province and the Nimbawah Domain of the Pine Creek Orogen, and the Murphy Inlier, Northern Territory/Queensland. These data was collected through the ongoing collaborative NTGS-GA geochronology project during the period July 2007-June 2009 under the National Geoscience Agreement (NGA). Six samples were analysed from the east Arunta region (HALE RIVER, ILLOGWA). Five of these samples were from Palaeoproterozoic metasediments and intrusives, one sample (1945963) was from the overlying Neoproterozoic Amadeus Basin (Table 1). Ten samples in total were collected from the Pine Creek Orogen; one from the Litchfield Province (CAPE SCOTT), the remainder from the Nimbuwah Domain (COBOURG PENINSULA, ALLIGATOR RIVER). One sample (from the base of the Westmoreland Conglomerate) was analysed from the Murphy Inlier region (WESTMORELAND; Qld). Three additional samples were submitted for SHRIMP analysis but which did not yield zircons or the zircons extracted were unsuitable for analysis.

Abstract for 34th IGC

Detrital zircon geochronology of high-grade metasedimentary rocks of the Harts Range Group (HRG) in central Australia indicates that its protoliths were deposited during the Neoproterozoic and Cambrian, coeval with sedimentation in the adjacent Amadeus and Georgina basins of the former Centralian Superbasin. The similar provenances of the HRG and basin successions imply that the HRG is the high-grade metamorphic correlative of the basin sequences. Metamorphic zircon formation at ~477 Ma and ~459 Ma appears to reflect peak and retrograde phases of the Early Ordovician Larapinta Event. Palaeogeographic reconstructions indicate that burial and metamorphism took place beneath an epicratonic sea, associated with the formation of a flat-lying foliation in the lower crust and tholeiitic magmatism, consistent with an extensional setting. Burial of the HRG to ~30 km appears to have taken place predominantly by sedimentary loading within an exceptionally deep intracratonic rift basin, the depth of which rivals those of the deepest basins in Earth history. This indicates that lower crustal high-grade metamorphism need not reflect compressional thickening of the crust.

The Tarcoola Goldfield is one of several districts included in the recently-proposed central Gawler gold province.

This record describes digital data compilation product, where several individual items are grouped for delivery on single CD-ROM. Content and number of items included in the compilation package can vary, depending on size of the individual items. The contents of this CD-ROM are as follows: Catalog # Title 25241 OZCHRON '99. National geochronology database 25240 OZCHRON '99. National geochronology database documentation