Clastic Sediments of Bird’s Head

Significance of clastic sediments of the Bird’s Head of New Guinea, Indonesia

Indra Gunawan and Robert Hall, completed project

The Bird’s Head of New Guinea is underlain by Australian continental crust and has a relatively complete stratigraphy from Palaeozoic to Recent and it is surrounded by active or recently active tectonic zones. Little work has been done in the Bird’s Head since regional reconnaissance mapping in the 1970s.

This research will focus on clastic sedimentation of the Bird’s Head and its Mesozoic and Cenozoic history that may record some parts of the tectonic history. Little is known about the composition of these sediments or variations in lithologies, and nothing is known about their provenance.

This project will take advantage of techniques familiar from other provenance studies and plan to focus particularly on heavy minerals and zircon dating to provide new data to aid interpretation of the tectonic history of eastern Indonesia.

Conglomerate succeeded by coarse-grained sandstone outcrop of the upper part Tipuma Fm

A little faith and some local help is must on a field season in West Papua

Recent Papers –

Max Webb et al., 2020. Isotopic mapping reveals the location of crustal fragments along a long-lived convergent plate boundary. Lithos.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lithos.2020.105687

Max Webb et al., 2020. The history of Cenozoic magmatism and collision in NW New Guinea – New insights into the tectonic evolution of the northernmost margin of the Australian Plate. Gondwana Research.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gr.2019.12.010

Amy Gough et al., 2020. Mid-Cenozoic fluvio-deltaic to marine environments of the Salin Sub-basin, Central Myanmar. Journal of Asian Earth Sciences.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jseaes.2019.104143

Recent News –

Amy Gough and Max Webb attended the Restech 2.0 Virtual Reservoir Conference. Amy Gough presented new SEARG research on the pitfalls of light mineral studies for sedimentary provenance in tropical climates.

Amy Gough was awarded an honorary research fellowship of the British Geological Survey and continues to foster collaborative relationships between SEARG and the BGS.