Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

Eromanga Basin

The Eromanga Basin is a sedimentary basin that formed during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, it is part of the Great Artesian Basin. Terrestrial sequences of Jurassic age, then shallow marine sequences in the Early Cretaceous, and in the Late Cretaceous, sequences ranging from paralic to fluvial and lacustrine, are characterise the basin. A large part of the Rolling Downs Group was subjected to chemical weathering  during the Late Cretaceous, with a second phase of weathering occurring during the early Tertiary (Senior et al., 1978).

Large areas of low relief and extensive alluvial systems of the Paroo and Worrego Rivers, that are separated by dissected plateaux having strongly dissected sediments of Jurassic age along the margin of the Murray-Darling Basin, characterise the physiography of the part of the Eromanga Basin that lies within the Murray-Darling Basin.

Among the major geological units that outcrop in the Eromanga Basin are the Hutton Sandstone and Injune Creek Group from the Jurassic, the Hooray Sandstone of the Cretaceous, the Rolling Downs Group of the Cretaceous, and from the Tertiary, the Glendower Formation, with alluvial and sandy sediments of Cainozoic age interspersed among these outcrops.

This the site of the Tookoonooka impact crater and a nearby possible crater, Talundilly

Sources & Further reading

Geology of the Murray-Darling Basin - Simplified Lithostratigraphic Groupings

Basins