Kenn Plateau Geology: Continental Fragment Structure and Sedimentary History

The 140,000 km² Kenn Plateau is a thinned continental fragment that rotated 45 degrees clockwise after breaking away from Australia. Geoscience Australia Data provides a geological description of its structure, including fault blocks, sedimentary basins with kilometers of sediment, and volcanic chains. The dataset, last updated in 2026, details its tectonic evolution from the Cretaceous to the present, including subsidence of over 2000 meters.

Use Cases

• Modeling plate tectonic reconstruction based on described fault blocks and rotation history.
• Analyzing sedimentary basin fill based on described sequences of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments.
• Studying volcanic hotspot tracks based on the described Tasmantid and Lord Howe volcanic chains.
• Investigating paleoenvironmental changes based on described unconformities and shifts in biosiliceous sedimentation.

Strengths

• Describes a specific, large geological feature with an area of about 140,000 km².
• Includes detailed temporal context spanning from the Cretaceous to the present day.
• Covers multiple geological processes including rifting, volcanism, sedimentation, and subsidence of 2000+ meters.

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 bias inherent to data_gov_au, focusing on a single plateau.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Time Range

Cretaceous to present

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 13:14:46.283192; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Kenn Plateau, northeast of Queensland, Australia, Southwest Pacific Ocean