Intracontinental Fault Reactivation in High Heat Production Areas of Central Australia: Insights From Apatite Fission Track Thermochronology

Abstract

Deformation, metamorphism and structural reactivation in response to evolving forces at the plate boundaries are interpreted to have occurred across much of central and eastern Australia throughout the Paleozoic-Early-Mesozoic. In the North Australian Craton (NAC; Figure 1), the far-field effects of accretionary orogenesis along eastern Gondwana are traditionally grouped together as the Ordovician-Carboniferous Alice Springs Orogeny, but are unevenly distributed across both basement terranes and overlying sedimentary basins (e.g.,