Canberra geologists have used the latest earthquake-measuring technology to image the tectonic plate beneath southeast Australia and reveal the continent’s geological building blocks for the first time. The Australian scientists, with international colleagues, conducted the research using seismometers placed throughout eastern Australia.
The instruments – which record ground motions caused by earthquakes as far away as Indonesia, Fiji and Japan – allowed researchers to probe deep beneath the Earth’s surface and find evidence of some key geological events that shaped the land mass we know today.
“The southeast of the Australian continent preserves a rich geological history that spans almost half a billion years. This history involves significant geological events like the opening of the Tasman Sea, the break-up of Australia and Antarctica and more recent volcanic events.”
Dr Nick Rawlinson, Research School of Earth Sciences, ANU