The Teniary West Sabah basin is a trench-associated sedimentary basin containing up to 12 kIn of predominantly siliciclastic sediments. The basin history can be divided into two phases: I. Pre-Middle Miocene deposition of deep marine deposits with tectonic imbrication related to south southeastward convergence along the fore-runners of the Palawan TroughlNW Borneo Trench.2. Middle Miocene and later deposition, after the cessation of subduction, by a series of northwestwardprograding shelf/slope sequences associated with important wrench-faulting in the basement.Although a small amount ofoil and gas has been discovered in the Pre-Middle Miocene deep water deposits, all commercial accumulations discovered to date are in the Middle Miocene and younger deposits.

The Conception and St. John’s Groups of southeastern Newfoundland contain some of the oldest known fossils of the Ediacaran macrobiota. The Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve UNESCO World Heritage Site is an internationally recognized locality for such fossils and hosts early evidence for both total group metazoan body fossils and metazoan-style locomotion. The Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve sedimentary succession includes ∼1500 m of fossil-bearing strata containing numerous dateable volcanogenic horizons, and therefore offers a crucial window into the rise and diversification of early animals. Here we present six stratigraphically coherent radioisotopic ages derived from zircons from volcanic tuffites of the Conception and St. John’s Groups at Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve. The oldest architecturally complex macrofossils, from the upper Drook Formation, have an age of 574.17 ± 0.66 Ma (including tracer calibration and decay constant uncertainties). The youngest rangeomorph fossils from Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, in the Fermeuse Formation, have a maximum age of 564.13 ± 0.65 Ma. Fossils of the famous “E” Surface are confirmed to be 565.00 ± 0.64 Ma, while exceptionally preserved specimens on the “Brasier” Surface in the Briscal Formation are dated at 567.63 ± 0.66 Ma. We use our new ages to construct an age-depth model for the sedimentary succession, constrain sedimentary accumulation rates, and convert stratigraphic fossil ranges into the time domain to facilitate integration with time-calibrated data from other successions. Combining this age model with compiled stratigraphic ranges for all named macrofossils within the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve succession, spanning 76 discrete fossil-bearing horizons, enables recognition and interrogation of potential evolutionary signals. Peak taxonomic diversity is recognized within the Mistaken Point and Trepassey Formations, and uniterminal rangeomorphs with undisplayed branching architecture appear several million years before multiterminal, displayed forms. Together, our combined stratigraphic, paleontological, and geochronological approach offers a holistic, time-calibrated record of evolution during the mid−late Ediacaran Period and a framework within which to consider other geochemical, environmental, and evolutionary data sets.

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The Lower Sandfjord Formation is a 1.5 km thick late Precambrian sandstone. It is a remarkably homogeneous unit consisting largely (98%) of cross‐bedded, texturally and mineralogically mature, coarse or medium sandstone, and is interpreted as a shallow marine deposit. This interpretation is based on the maturity, the exclusively tabular bed geometry, occasional sets of herring‐bone cross‐bedding and most importantly, the abundance of sheet‐like pebble layers only 1–5 grain diameters thick and sometimes overlain by thin siltstone drapes. Various different types of compound cross‐bedding, all of which show evidence of reversing currents, are interpreted as sub‐tidal sandwaves. These sets range in thickness from 0.5 to 14 m, and in conjunction with the overall abundance of cross‐bedding probably indicate strong tidal currents. A tide‐dominated current regime is also considered essential to explain the derivation of such large quantities of sand from the contemporary coasts. It is suggested that sand transport offshore took place during the erosional transgression of abandoned delta lobes. However, the predominance of a single, easterly, mode in the palaeocurrent patterns suggests that the tidal currents were reinforced by some other current system. The predominantly unimodal palaeocurrent patterns and the coarse, sand‐rich nature of the succession, taken together with the thickness do not superficially seem likely characteristics for a shallow marine sequence. Nevertheless this study appears to demonstrate that such deposits were formed on tidal shelves in at least late Precambrian time.

Passive margins have been the reliable, accessible mainstay of exploration success worldwide for the last 25 years, and have hosted the spectacularly fast exploitation of deepwater resources (Angola, Nigeria, Brazil, Trinidad, USA Gulf of Mexico, Egypt, Australia and India). Despite, or perhaps because of this, there is still much to learn about the variety of hydrocarbon habitats they present.For example: (1) deep seismic observations and deep sea drilling have revealed more of the diversity of passive margins geodynamics. This liberates explorationists from simple geodynamic models, with consequences not only for new views of thermal history but also for the whole tectonic and stratigraphic evolution. For example, the time significance assigned to the geometries traditionally labelled 'pre-rift, syn-rift and sag' may be misleading. This has implications for correlations, the significance assigned to unconformities and sequence boundaries, heat flow and structural history. (2) New deep imaging of the sedimentary sections has revealed mistaken assumptions about the importance of 'mobile substrate' in major deltas and allowed the detailed unravelling of salt and shale movement and its implications for reservoir and trap. (3) Depositional models for deepwater reservoirs have increased in predictive capability and modern seismic imaging supports new models for shallow water sequences. (4) Discoveries of very large amounts of dry bacterial methane in stratigraphic traps have challenged old assumptions about prospectivity based on thermally matured source rocks. (5) New engineering and development technologies are opening up the commercialization of remote frontiers. As a consequence there is legitimate scope to re-visit old 'dogmas' and to propose that each passive margin segment is best regarded as unique, with analysis and interpretation rooted in observation rather than models (at least while the newly proposed models evolve to stability). Many of these themes were visited in the Passive Margins session of the Seventh Petroleum Geology Conference, held in London in 2009. This paper outlines some of these ideas, and considers how exploration along passive margins in the next decade can use new geoscience thinking.

Reservoir quality of the Fulmar Formation in the UK Central Graben depends on the original distribution of facies as well as subsequent modification by partly facies-dependant diagenesis. Numerous sequence stratigraphical analyses of the Humber Group have been published recently, each of which has elements which are convincing geologically. Nevertheless, it is our experience that facies and reservoir prediction within the Humber Group remain difficult. Sequence stratigraphical interpretations in the Group are clearly non-unique due to major uncertainties in the data. (1) Biostratigraphical uncertainties include species concepts, recognition of agediagnostic taxa in thermally altered floras, validity of repeated micropaleontological events and equivocal paleoenvironmental information. (2) Sedimentological uncertainties are due to the gross facies similarity of the Fulmar Formation over a large geographic area and throughout the Upper Jurassic, which make the detection of potential maximum flooding surfaces and especially sequence boundaries difficult even in many cored wells. Furthermore strong syndepositional subsidence variations due to both salt movement and tectonics, lead to aliased sampling of the subsurface in wells, which are mostly situated on highs. (3) Seismic correlation difficulties are due to persistent seismic imaging problems below the Late Cimmerian ('X') Unconformity. (4) The depositional and sequence stratigraphical models for Humber Group deposition need to be set in the context of a transgressively skewed, back-stepping system with strong local subsidence control. The overall transgression is thought to be due to the combination of sea-level rise, widening and deepening of the basin due to tectonics, and reduced sediment supply through time. In this situation existing models have to be applied with even more care than normal if they are not to be misleading (e.g. concepts of forced regressions). These difficulties are clarified in the context of a Kimmeridgian time slice through the Humber Group. Multiple options exist in well log correlations. As a result palaeogeo-g~aphic reconstructions of the time-slice have an error margin of + 15 km, which has serious implications on the validity of reservoir quality predictions. Recently published sequence stratigraphical analyses of the Humber Group include both Vail-type schemes (e.g. Donovan et al. 1993) and Galloway-type schemes (e.g. Partington et al. 1993a). The framework presented in this paper (Fig. 1) combines elements from both approaches. There is general agreement on the age of maximum flooding surfaces between Shell nomenclature and Partington et al. (1993a), although we have not been able to recognize all their surfaces in our datasets. Sequence boundaries indicated by Donovan et al. (1993) are all recognized by ourselves. Donovan et al. have tied their sequence boundaries to the global sea-level chart of Haq et al. (1988). However biostratigraphical datings indicate that at least some sequence boundaries found in the Humber Group have no ...

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