The rifting of continental and oceanic lithosphere: Observations from the Woodlark Basin

A detailed marine geophysical survey of the Woodlark Basin has given us a high resolution picture of the evolution of the Woodlark Basin. An algorithm developed for this study, which reconstructs bathymetry and magnetization grids to selected ages, has revealed many of the details of the evolution of this young ocean basin. The Woodlark Basin formed by the nucleation of spreading segments in sites of focused continental rifting. These segments, which are on the order of 100 km long, subsequently grew by propagation. Segments form in an overlapping configuration, resulting in the deformation and rotation of intervening continental lithosphere. Transform faults form some time later, cutting through continental lithosphere to join the tips of the spreading segments. Continental margins formed by nucleation of a spreading segment are distinct from those formed by propagation. Nucleation margins have concordant abyssal hill fabric, continent/ocean boundary and continental rift fabric. The continent/ocean boundary (COB) of propagation margins is discordant with abyssal hill fabric, but may be either concordant or discordant with continental rift fabric. A third type of COB, formed when there is no propagation, results in abyssal hill fabric perpendicular to the COB. Similar geometries result from a COB formed on a transform fault. Seismicity on the margins after the initiation of sea-floor spreading, and the inward curvature of abyssal fabric formed on spreading centers propagating into the continental margin, demonstrate that extension continues on the margins for up to 1 Ma. Large reorientations of the spreading center take place by propagation or synchronous reorientation. The present-day sea-floor reveals that its 500-km-long spreading center reoriented synchronously, without propagation, about 80 ka. There is no evidence of the V-shaped pseudofault geometry typical of spreading center propagation, nor of the progressive fanning of sea-floor fabric characteristic of spreading center rotation.; The results from the Woodlark Basin are applicable to other young ocean basins, for example the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Equally, they provide insight into the study of older margins, where sediment cover and/or subsidence complicates interpretation.