Constraining the age and provenance of the basal quartzites of the Centralian Superbasin

Abstract

The Heavitree Formation of the Amadeus Basin, central Australia, is thought to correlate with a number of similar formations in the Officer, Ngalia, Georgina and Murraba Basins that formed the Centralian Superbasin. The Jasper Gorge Formation of the Victoria Basin and Jamison Sandstone of the Beetaloo Sub-basin are also thought to be corollaries. These formations are all constrained to being younger than ca. 1.0 Ga by U-Pb detrital zircon studies. However, in all cases, this is suspected to considerably pre-date the timing of deposition. Here, we present new U-Pb and Hf data from seven samples of the Amadeus Basin Heavitree Formation to a) better constrain the age of the Heavitree Formation, b) investigate the spatial variation in provenance of the Heavitree Formation, and, c) compare it with other ‘Supersequence 1’ quartzites from the wider Centralian Superbasin.