Paleogeographic reconstructions of Australia during the Cretaceous (36); blue shading denotes marine inundation, and brown shading denotes those parts of the continent that are subaerially exposed. The are ranges to the left refer only to the inferred paleogeographic reconstructions. The red outline denotes the Eromanda and Surat basins. (B to E) Predicted marine inundation of Australia from convection models. Ages to the right refer only to models. Blue areas are those areas covered by shallow seas; brown shading denotes those parts of the continent predicted to be exposed. (B) Nominal case with sedimentation rate of 5 m/My. (C) The same as (A), except for 10 m/My. (D) The same as (A), except with the initial topography set to present observed values. Accommodation spaces of less than -500 m have been truncated in (D). (E) Slab with a 30^o dip angle and 2400 km off the Australian margin with 5 m/My.

Observed and predicted characteristics of the southeast Indian Ocean. (A) Observed bathymetry, isotopic signature of the mid-ocean ridge basalts (3), and inferred migration of the isotopic boundary (15). (B) Bathymetry corrected for conductive cooling (predicted subsidence is 2600 + 220 x age^1/2 in meters and age is in million years) and for sediment loading (13). (C to E) Predictions from nominal model (28). (C) Tracers sampled at the ridge and rotated to present positions. (D) inferred crustal thickness based on mantle temperature. (E) Total topography on the top surface driven by viscous flow and crustal thickness. (F to H) Same quantities for an identical model, except with no phase changes. (F), (G), and (H) correspond to (C), (D), and (E), respectively.

(Left) Initial condition for nominal model (28) with plate stencils and imposed velocity vectors. The position of the trench is shown by the vertical line with the crossing tick marks such that the slab extends from y = 1.2 to 3.2. Major tick marks on the box edges have a 2000-km spacing. The domain is Cartesian with horizontal dimensions 4.5 x 4.8 and depth of 1. All of the models are based on a box depth of 2000 km; this depth is less than of the whole mantle but has a volume greater than the mantle under an equivalent area of Earth's surface.

(Right) The initial configuration if the slab shown for line a-a'; the center of the slab delineates the initial position of the "Gondwanaland" traces in red and "pacific" traces in yellow.

Plates stencils and imposed plate velocity (left) and predicted dynamic topography at six times [(A) 130 Ma, (B) 110 Ma, (C) 90 Ma, (D) 60 Ma, (E) 30 Ma, and (F) 0 Ma] for the nominal model (right) (28). The dynamic topography was computed for a no-slip top boundary condition. The black lines in (B), (D), and (F) denote the temperature cross sections shown in Fig 6, A to C, respectively. In (A), topography greater than -350 m is shown in black and reaches a maximum value of -1200 m. In (F), the maximum topography is -350 m.

Vertical cross sections of temperature for nominal model (28). (A to C) Nearly east-west profiles. (D) A south-north section orthogonal to (C) with respective lines of intersection shown by white dashed vertical lines. Locations of cross sections are shown as black lines in Fig. 5, B, D, and F. The upper scale is for (A) only (representing a large temperature span), and the lower scale is for (B) to (D). R denotes the position of the ridge. The tick marks have a 5000-km spacing.

see also  Australian Plate kinematics