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THE SAHUL SHELFThe Sahul Shelf is part of an enormous submerged area bordering the north of Australia (Fig. i). Its seaward limit is best taken at the 300-fathom line, where the continental slope begins. The relatively depressed edge of the continental shelf here is peculiar and has already been observed by Kuenen;2 it will be briefly discussed later.In the more restricted sense in which we shall use the name here the Sahul Shelf is the part of this great Australian shelf that projects almost to the southeasternmost islands of the East Indies. Its northern limit comes within 75 miles of Timor but is separated from this outer arc of the Lesser Sunda Islands by a long trough more than iooo fathoms deep, generally known as the Timor Trough. On the west, the Sahul Shelf drops more gently approximately along I220 E. longitude to the mooo-fathom level of the northeasternmost Indian Ocean and eventually to more than 3000 fathoms in the Wharton Deep. On the east, however,...
