Cretaceous Sedimentary Rocks of the Eromanga and Surat Basins

Little deformed Cretaceous sedimentary rocks underlie 1,500,000 km² of eastern Australia, deposited over about 20 million years. The dataset describes depositional environments ranging from freshwater to shallow marine, with sequences varying in quartz content and sediment source. It is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network.

Use Cases

• Modeling epicontinental sea depositional environments based on described marine and paralic sequences.
• Analyzing regional tectonic tilt changes based on the described shift from northwesterly to southwesterly tilt.
• Studying sediment provenance based on described quartz-rich and quartz-poor sequences derived from different sources.

Strengths

• Describes a vast geographic area covering 1,500,000 km².
• Provides a detailed temporal context spanning approximately 20 million years.
• Includes specific sediment thickness measurements, with up to 2000 m preserved in the Eromanga Basin.

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

Time Range

Cretaceous period, spanning approximately 20 million years.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-05 04:54:29.820530; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern Australia, specifically the Eromanga and Surat Basins.