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The Miocene sedimentary succession of the southern Browse Basin records the response of a tropical reef system to long‐term, strong subsidence on a passive continental margin. Geological interpretation of a comprehensive two‐dimensional (2D) seismic reflectivity data set documents for the first time the development of a continuous Miocene barrier reef on the Australian North West Shelf. With a length of over 250 km, this barrier reef is among the Earth's largest in the Neogene record. A sequence stratigraphic analysis tied to well data shows that the main controls for the evolution, growth and demise of the reef system were subsidence, third‐order global‐scale eustatic variations and antecedent topography. The generally very high Miocene subsidence rates estimated for the study area cannot be explained by typical passive‐margin subsidence controlled by lithospheric cooling and sedimentary loading alone. Additional dynamic subsidence induced by mantle convection, though documented as unusually large on the northern margin of Australia during the Neogene, can be also regarded as being of only minor importance. Therefore, accelerated tectonic subsidence related to the collision of the Australian and Eurasian Plates 250–500 km north of the study area seems to exert an important influence on reef development and demise, complicated by local tectonic inversion. The Miocene tectonic reactivation and inversion of an older structural grain is interpreted to have controlled the reef development considerably by providing localized topographic highs along transpressional anticlines above basement‐rooted faults that served as preferential sites for reef growth and retreat during times of rapidly rising sea level. This exemplarily shows that the far‐field effects of collision‐induced tectonic subsidence can significantly influence carbonate systems on passive margins.

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