Our paper "Integrating deep Earth dynamics in paleogeographic reconstructions of Australia" is now available in its final version as corrected proof under this DOI: 10.1016/j.tecto.2009.08.028 or, alternatively, here.

The paper comes with two animations as supplements which are linked below but also downloadable from this FTP directory (full size, 14 and 13 MB, respectively). For a full explanation of the animations please refer to the paper.

Animation 1 shows our modelled dynamic topography for Australia for the past 70 Ma.

Animation 2 shows our modelled paleogeography for Australia for the past 70 Ma, including the effects of plate motions, mantle convection and eustatic sea level changes.

Our Tectonophysics paper "Integrating deep Earth dynamics in paleogeographic reconstructions of Australia" is in press and available through Sciencedirect under the following DOI: 10.1016/j.tecto.2009.08.028.
Pre-print versions of the paper are available on request.

Our paper "Integrating deep Earth dynamics in paleogeographic reconstructions of Australia" authored by Heine, Steinberger, Müller and DiCaprio was accepted for publication in a Tectonophysics special volume edited by Nick Rawlinson and Wouter Schellart. There are two animations accompanying the paper which can readily be accessed:

1. Animation of dynamic topography, using the s20rts mantle tomography model and modified backward advection. View here (7.5 MB).
2. The evolution of Australia's paleogeography during the past 70 Ma, integrating dynamic topography, eustatic sea level changes and sedimentation. View here (5 MB).

Both animations require Apple's QuickTime Player

Abstract
It is well documented that the Cenozoic progressive flooding of Australia, contemporaneous with a eustatic sea level fall, requires a downward tilting of the Australian Plate towards the SE Asian subduction system. Previously, this large-scale, mantle-convection driven dynamic topography effect has been approximated by computing the time-dependent vertical shifts and tilts of a plane, but the observed subsidence and uplift anomalies indicate a more complex interplay between time-dependent mantle convection and plate motion. We combine plate kinematics with a global mantle backward-advection model based on shear-wave mantle tomography, paleogeographic data, eustatic sea level estimates and basin stratigraphy to reconstruct the Australian flooding history for the last 70 Myrs on a continental scale. We compute time-dependent dynamic surface topography and continental inundation of a digital elevation model adjusted for sediment accumulation. Our model reveals two evolving dynamic topography lows, over which the Australian plate has progressively moved. We interpret the southern low to be caused by sinking slab material with an origin along the eastern Gondwana subduction zone in the Cretaceous, whereas the northern low, which first straddles northern Australia in the Oligocene, is mainly attributable to material subducted north and northeast of Australia. Our model accounts for the Paleogene exposure of the Gulf of Carpentaria region at a time when sea level was much higher than today, and explains anomalous Late Tertiary subsidence on Australia's northern, western and southern margins. The resolution of our model, which excludes short-wavelength mantle density anomalies and is restricted to depths larger than 200 km, is not sufficient to model the two well recorded episodes of major transgressions in South Australia in the Eocene and Miocene. However, the overall, long-wavelength spatio-temporal pattern of Australia's inundation record is well captured by combining our modelled dynamic topography with a recent eustatic sea level curve. We suggest that the apparent Late Cenozoic northward tilting of Australia was a stepwise function of South Australia first moving away northwards from the Gondwana subduction-related dynamic topography low in the Oligocene, now found under the Australian-Antarctic Discordance, followed by a drawing down of northern Australia as it overrode a slab burial ground now underlying much of the northern half of Australia, starting in the Miocene. Our model suggests that today's geography of Australia is strongly dependent on mantle forces. Without mantle convection, which draws Australia down by up to 300 m, nearly all of Australia's continental shelves would be exposed. We conclude that dissecting the interplay between eustasy and mantle-driven dynamic topography is critical for understanding hinterland uplift, basin subsidence, the formation and destruction of shallow epeiric seas and their facies distribution, but also for the evolution of petroleum systems.

Here's a new version of the reconstructed Australian paleogeography for the last 70 Ma. The model combines mantle-induced dynamic topography, eustatic sealevel changes (Haq & El-Qhatani, 2005) and account for sedimentation by backstripping. More details follow soon.
Watch the animation here (QuickTime Player plugin needed).

Our paper entitled ''Mid-Cretaceous seafloor spreading pulse: Fact or fiction?'', lead by Maria Seton was published in Geology this week.
Here's the reference.

I have written a detailed recipe for building GPlates from source on Mac OS X without depending on package managers.

This build requires that you have basic familiarity with the command line and the Terminal on Mac OS X. The easiest way to install GPlates is to use as many pre-compiled installer packages as possible. Binary packages for OS X are available for GDAL, CMAKE, and Qt. However, you need to compile the Boost and icu libraries and, in the end, GPlates.

Find the PDF of the instructions here.

Akio Sakai pointed me to an error in the well location plot of Fig. 8 of my 2005 paper in the Aust. J. Earth Sci.. The location plot for 4 backstripping wells shows the wrong geographic locations for the Taltarni-1, Longleat-1 and Yampi-1 wells. This map shows the correct locations, with the ones used in the AJES paper indicated in red. However, only the locations on the map are wrong, the backstripping data for the individual wells are correct.

Apologies for the mistake!

An article entitled "Research excites oil industry" about our ICONS atlas of intracontinental basins recently appeared on Petroleumnews.Net. The article requires to sign in to the page.

Links: Petroleumnews.Net and the direct link to the article (Registration needed).

Quote from the article:
Geoscientists at the University of Sydney are quietly working on research that is revolutionising the understanding of petroleum-producing basins in the heart of continents.

The research explains the greater-than-predicted sediment thicknesses in many intracontinental basins around the world, including the Eromanga Basin in Australia and Russia’s West Siberian Basin - a prolific oil producer.

::READ MORE

My geosci e-mail is no longer active due to the School's migration to entralised e-mail services. My account remains active and the new e-mail is c.heine<at>usyd.edu.au (Replace the greater/less than signs with the @ sign).

Our PEPI paper 'Subsidence in intracontinental basins due to dynamic topography' (Heine, Müller, Steinberger, Torsvik) is in press and available at 10.1016/j.pepi.2008.05.008.

The ICONS atlas is currently offline due to some maintenance/updates. The site should be up and running again through the EarthByte portal in the second half of July.

Our paper in Phys. Earth Planet. Int. titled 'Subsidence in intracontinental basins due to dynamic topography' (Heine, Müller, Steinberger and Torsvik) has been accepted and is available online through the following doi: 10.1016/j.pepi.2008.05.008.

Our paper 'Long-Term Sea-Level Fluctuations Driven by Ocean Basin Dynamics' is published in Science, Friday Mar 07th. Go to the EarthByte webpage for downloads and supplementary data. Here is the direct link to the paper on the Science website.

If you are located behind a proxy server (or using TOR services) and running Leopard in combination with .Mac syncing, you might experience frequent crashes of the PubSubAgent. Here are a few links which provide a fix - in short: adding *.mac.com to the 'bypass proxies' list in System preferences → Network → Proxies.

More details here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6056954
http://www.mmisoftware.co.uk/weblog/?p=293

The ICONSatlas (Atlas of IntraCONtinental sedimentary basinS) is online and accessible through the EarthByte webpages (www.earthbyte.org). The atlas is a compilation of crustal properties of more than 240 intracontinental basins globally using openly available data. It represents Chapter 4 of my PhD Thesis (email me for a PDF).
For enquiries, please contact me: email me (replace the <at> with the '@').