Challenger No. 1 Well: Late Cretaceous-Palaeogene Nannofossil Biostratigraphy

Late Cretaceous to Palaeogene calcareous nannofossil assemblages from the Challenger No. 1 well in the offshore Perth Basin, Western Australia. The data, associated with the Australian Ocean Data Network, revises the age of the Challenger Formation type section from Late Eocene to Middle Eocene-Oligocene. It identifies three major disconformities and shows the section is more complete than coeval sections from nearby Deep Sea Drilling Project sites.

Use Cases

• Refine geological age models for the Perth Basin based on nannofossil biostratigraphy mentioned in the description.
• Correlate offshore and onshore stratigraphic units like the Challenger and Kings Park Formations.
• Study sedimentary discontinuities and condensed sections identified at the Eocene/Oligocene and Cretaceous/Tertiary boundaries.
• Investigate the facies relationship between the Challenger Formation and the more terrigenous Porpoise Bay Formation.

Strengths

• Data provides a revised age for the Challenger Formation type section, changing it from Late Eocene to Middle Eocene-Oligocene.
• Identifies three major disconformities or condensed sections at specific geological boundaries.
• Compares the section's completeness favorably to nearby Deep Sea Drilling Project sites in the Perth Abyssal Plain and Naturaliste Plateau.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic/temporal bias inherent to data_gov_au.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Biostratigraphic analysis of well core/cuttings.

Time Range

Late Cretaceous to Palaeogene (Campanian to Oligocene)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-23 01:59:36.693985; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Challenger No. 1 well, offshore Perth Basin, Western Australia