The emplacement of the ca 1590-1575 Ma Hiltaba Suite granites records a large magmatic event throughout the Gawler Craton, South Australia. The Hiltaba Suite granites intrude the highly deformed Archaean-Palaeoproterozoic rocks throughout the craton nuclei. Geophysical interpretation of the poorly exposed central western Gawler Craton suggests that the region can be divided into several distinct domains that are bounded by major shear zones, exhibiting a sequence of overprinting relationships. The north-trending Yarlbrinda Shear Zone merges into the east-trending Yerda Shear Zone that, in turn, merges into the northeast-trending Coorabie Shear Zone. Several poorly exposed Hiltaba Suite granite plutons occur within a wide zone of crustal shearing that is bounded to the north by the Yerda Shear Zone and to the south by the Oolabinnia Shear Zone. This wide zone of crustal shearing is interpreted as a major zone of synmagmatic dextral strike-slip movement that facilitated the ascent of Hiltaba Suite granite intrusions to the upper crust. The aeromagnetic and gravity data reveal that the intrusions are ~ 15-25 km in diameter. Forward modelling of the geophysical data shows that the intrusions have a tabular geometry and are less than 6 km deep.
Ambient seismic noise data from the ongoing WOMBAT transportable seismic array in southeast Australia, the largest deployment of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, are used to produce a high‐resolution 3‐D shear wave velocity model of the region. We apply a two‐stage, transdimensional, hierarchical Bayesian inversion approach to recover phase velocity maps at periods of 1–20 s and then invert phase velocity dispersion for 3‐D shear wave velocity structure to the base of the crust. Data uncertainty is propagated through the sequence of inversions, ensuring that model complexity is justified by the quality and quantity of the measurements. The pattern of 3‐D velocity variations helps elucidate the geometry and position of key crustal features—such as the Torrens Hinge Zone—associated with the transition from Paleozoic eastern Australia to Precambrian central and western Australia that formed along the proto‐Pacific margin of east Gondwana.
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