No abstract

Results of one of the most comprehensive paleomagnetic and supporting geological programs ever carried out in offshore SE Asia on North Luzon, northern Philippines, are reported. Six new results, based on 66 sites, are reported from a total collection of 243 individual sites. Declinations in the data subset are sometimes scattered, likely reflecting combinations of major plate and local rotations in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions, and thus have a somewhat limited value for tectonic modeling. The inclination data are, however, much more valuable and can be best explained if North Luzon traveled as part of the Philippine Sea Plate for most of its history, a scenario which is compatible with the known geology of the eastern Philippines and broader region. In the proposed model, for all of its Eocene‐Pliocene history, North Luzon is placed on the western edge of the Philippine Sea Plate, effectively always just to the west of the site where the Benham Plateau formed ∼40 Ma. The paleomagnetic data indicate a substantial northward migration of the area since the start of the Neogene, with an earlier interval stretching back to at least the mid‐Early Cretaceous when this part of the plate occupied equatorial latitudes. Post‐15 Ma motion of the plate has involved the indentation of the Palawan microcontinental block into the western side of the Philippine Archipelago. Deformations induced by this process offer the most likely explanation for the scattered declinations observed in North Luzon and areas a short distance to the south.

Alternating chert-clastic sequences juxtaposed with limestone blocks, which are

Petrological and geochemical investigations of the sedimentary Lasala formation in northwest Mindoro, Philippines, offer new insights into the origin of this geologically contentious region. Mindoro island's position at the boundary between Sundaland and the Philippine Mobile Belt has led to variable suggestions as to how much of it is continent derived or not. The Eocene Lasala formation overlies the Jurassic Halcon metamorphics, a regionally metamorphosed suite generally thought to have formed as a result of arc-continent collision processes. The sedimentary formation consists mainly of sandstones and shales interbedded with mudstones, basalt flows, and subordinate limestones and conglomerates. Petrographic information on the Lasala clastic rocks demonstrates a uniform framework composition that is predominantly quartzose. Major oxide, trace element abundances, and various elemental ratios similarly impart a strongly felsic signature. These characteristics are taken to indicate a chiefly continental, passive margin derivation and deposition of the Lasala sediments during the Eocene. The weak indication of active margin influence is suggested to be an inherited signature, supported by paleogeographic models of the southeastern Asian margin area during the preCenozoic.