The Precambrian

This major period of geologic time can be subdivided into the older Archean and the younger Proterozoic eons, the time boundary between them being some 2.5 billion years ago. In Australia the main outcrop of the Archean and older Proterozoic rocks is in the Yilgarn and Pilbara blocks of the southwest and northwest, respectively.

In the Yilgarn block the oldest known rocks are sialic crust (i.e., composed of rocks rich in silica and alumina) that developed in the Narryer Gneiss Complex between 4.3 and 3.7 billion years ago. The older end of that time span is provided by detrital zircon grains found in younger metasedimentary rock (metamorphosed sedimentary rock) some 3.3 to 3.7 billion years old: as determined by ion microprobe analysis, the grains are 4.2 to 4.3 billion years old. A zircon grain imbedded in 3.75-billion-year-old metamorphosed sediment from Jack Hills in Western Australia was found to be even older, 4.4 billion years, and it is thus the oldest dated material on Earth. The younger end of 3.7 billion years ago is provided by samarium-neodymium (Sm-Nd) isotopic analyses of anorthosite and gabbro and more extensive granitic rocks. Subsequent to such igneous rocks being formed, siliceous sedimentary rocks were deposited during an interval of subdued relief and extensive sheets of vein quartz pebbles were concentrated on the surface.

The oldest rocks in the Pilbara block to the north make up a granite-greenstone terrane and so differ distinctly from those of the Yilgarn block. They are mostly 3.3 to 3.5 billion years old and comprise basic (alkaline) volcanics associated with horizontal tabular igneous bodies known as sills and layered intrusions, as well as acid volcanics associated with granitic plutons (bodies of deep-seated intrusive igneous rock) and sheets. The association of basic and acid rocks suggests the possibility that older sialic crust melted. Chert within basalt 3.5 billion years old at the North Pole mining centre in Western Australia contains stromatolites (layered deposits formed by the growth of cyanobacteria) and filamentous colonial microfossils that are among the oldest known sets of fossils on Earth. Between 3.05 and 2.9 billion years ago, thick acid and basic volcanics and sedimentary rocks were intruded by large granite plutons and deformed and metamorphosed to establish the internal form of the Pilbara block. Between 2.8 and 2.7 billion years ago, the beveled surface of the Pilbara block was blanketed by basaltic lava. Finally, between 2.55 to 2.4 billion years ago, banded-iron formation, dolomite, shale, and minor acid-volcanic rocks were intruded by sills of porphyry. Iron ores of hematite and goethite have been formed by supergene enrichment of banded-iron formation.

The Yilgarn block became an internally coherent mass only after greenstone and associated granitic terrane had developed from 3.0 to 2.5 billion years ago, and it was then intruded by a swarm of vertical tabular bodies called dikes composed of dolerite. Mafic and ultramafic rocks (those composed primarily of ferromagnesian—dark-coloured—minerals) 2.7 billion years old within the granite-greenstone terrane are the chief host of the epigenetic gold deposits of Western Australia. Slightly older (2.8 billion years) volcanic ultramafic rocks contain deposits of nickel sulfide.

The Pilbara and Yilgarn blocks were joined between 2.0 to 1.8 billion years ago along a belt of deformed continental-margin deposits. Later in the Proterozoic, between 1.6 billion and 650 million years ago, mountain belts resulting from the collision of continental terranes were repeatedly worn down and overlain by sedimentary rocks. That view contrasts with another interpretation that regards most of the western part of Australia as intact since Archean times and considers that most later orogenic activity was ensialic.

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The development of the late Proterozoic Adelaidean province, the other Precambrian succession to be described here, was within a sialic basement. The Adelaidean succession crops out in the region of South Australia between Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges and contains an almost complete sedimentary record of the late Proterozoic. The early Adelaidean Callanna and Burra groups are confined to troughs faulted down into basement. A sheet of sedimentary deposits at the base of the Callanna group was cut by faults into rift valleys that filled with basic volcanic rocks and evaporitic sediment and carbonate rock. The succeeding Burra group comprises fluvial sediment followed by shallow marine carbonate.

The late Adelaidean Umberatana and Wilpena groups unconformably succeed older rocks. The Umberatana group contains a rich record of two glaciations: the older Sturtian glaciation is indicated by glaciomarine diamictites deposited on a shallow shelf and at the bottom of newly rifted troughs; the younger Marinoan glaciation is represented by diamictites deposited on the basin floor and sandstone on the shelf. The Wilpena group comprises extensive sheets of interbedded sandstone, siltstone, and shale deposited during two marine transgressions, during the second of which deep canyons were cut and filled. The uppermost part of the Wilpena group, in the latest Proterozoic, contains the celebrated Ediacara assemblage of the oldest well-known animal fossils.

The Precambrian rocks of Australia provide a rich source of economically important minerals, such as the above-mentioned major iron ore deposits of the Pilbara block and the gold and nickel deposits of the Yilgarn block. Other minerals include diamonds from the Argyle diatreme (vertical volcanic conduit filled with breccia) in northern Western Australia. Lead and zinc are found at Broken Hill in western New South Wales, and lead, zinc, and copper occur at Mount Isa in northwestern Queensland and at Olympic Dam in South Australia.

The Paleozoic Era

Phanerozoic Australia is divided at the Tasman Line into two parts. Those are a western terrane of exposed Precambrian blocks and fold belts overlain by thin Phanerozoic basins and an eastern terrane of exposed Phanerozoic fold belts and basins.

Principal regimes

During Phanerozoic times, Australia has been marked by three regimes: Uluru (541 to 320 million years ago), Innamincka (320 to 97 million years ago), and Potoroo (the past 97 million years). Each regime, a complex of uniform plate-tectonic and paleoclimatic events at a similar or slowly changing latitude, generated a depositional sequence of distinct facies separated by gaps in deposition.

The Paleozoic Era (about 541 to 252 million years ago) opened in Australia with the breakup of the Precambrian continent along the Tasman Line and the initial generation of the floor of the Paleo Pacific Ocean by seafloor spreading. In the Adelaide area, wedges of deepwater quartzose sediment advanced over the newly formed seafloor. On the northwestern side of Australia, widespread basalt erupted over the Precambrian platform, possibly during the initial generation of the Paleo Tethyan Sea, and was succeeded by deposition of shallow marine limestone with abundant fossil trilobites and archeocyathids. The initial Paleo Pacific marginal seafloor was subducted—i.e., forced under the edge of a converging plate into the hot mantle—at the end of the Cambrian Period (485 million years ago); concomitant deformation and granitic intrusion of the overlying deepwater sediments and those of the adjacent Adelaidean region formed the Delamerian fold belt. A similar cycle of marginal sea generation and subsequent Mariana-type subduction (within oceanic lithosphere) accreted a second fold belt to eastern Australia during the Ordovician Period (about 485 to 444 million years ago). That was followed by an interval of block faulting and widespread granitic intrusion in eastern Australia that produced a landscape similar to the present Basin and Range Province of the western United States; by the late Devonian Period (about 385 million years ago) the first of a series of magmatic orogenic arcs had become established by Chilean-type subduction (of oceanic lithosphere beneath continental lithosphere) on the eastern margin, and a thick succession of mainly sandstone and shale accumulated in the moatlike foreland basin between the mountain belt and the craton—the flat and relatively stable interior portion of the continent. At the same time, local uplifts in central Australia shed gravels into the Amadeus Basin. By the mid-Carboniferous Period (320 million years ago), central Australia was deformed by folding and thrusting along east-west axes, and eastern Australia was deformed by folding along north-south axes and a subsequent granitoid intrusion that consolidated the Lachlan and Thomson fold belts in an epoch of deformation that concluded the Uluru regime.

Australia had moved to higher latitudes so that the alpine uplands that followed the deformation were covered by the nucleus of a continental ice sheet. Only the highest peaks stood prominently above the surface of the ice in the form of nunataks, and the little sediment available was carried off the continent in ice streams. The melting of the ice sheet early in the Permian Period (i.e., about 290 million years ago) released the sediment into the newly subsiding basins of the Innamincka regime. Much of interior Australia was covered by broad basins. The eastern margin between the New England Fold Belt and the craton became a second foreland basin in which the rich seams of black coal in the Bowen Basin of Queensland and the Sydney Basin of New South Wales were deposited during the final 10 million years of the Paleozoic Era. Other economic resources in Paleozoic rocks are the reef gold in Victoria that triggered the first mining boom, lead and zinc at Cobar and Woodlawn in New South Wales, and natural gas in Permian sandstone in the Cooper Basin of South Australia.