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The middle-upper Cretaceous Ceduna River system traversed continental Australia from the NE coast to the centre of the southern coast.At its mouth,it formed a vast delta system that is similar in scale to the Niger delta of West Africa.The delta system is composed of two main lobes that represent different phases of delta construction.A recent hypothesis has challenged the traditional idea that both lobes of the delta were derived from a transcontinental river system by suggesting that the upper lobe(Santonian- Maastrichtian) is instead derived from a restricted catchment within southern Australia.Hf isotopic data presented here fingerprint the original source of the upper delta lobe zircons to NE Australia,with data comparing well with similar U-Pb and Lu-Hf isotopic data from the Lachlan Orogen,the New England Orogen,the eastern Musgraves Province and the northern Flinders Ranges.These data do not preclude a model where the lobe is derived from recycled Eromanga Basin sediments during a phase of late Cretaceous inland Australian uplift,but when coupled with reconnaissance low-temperature thermochronometry from the region of the Ceduna River course indicating widespread Triassic-Jurassic exhumation,and comparisons with detrital zircon data from the Winton Formation upstream of any proposed uplift,we suggest that both lobes of the Ceduna Delta are likely to be derived from a transcontinental Ceduna River.
The middle-upper Cretaceous Ceduna River system traversed from continental Australia from the NE coast to the center of the southern coast. At its mouth, it formed a vast delta system that is similar to scale to the Niger delta of West Africa. The delta system is composed of two main lobes that represent different phases of delta construction. A recent hypothesis has challenged the traditional idea that both lobes of the delta were derived from a transcontinental river system by suggesting that the upper lobe (Santonian- Maastrichtian) is instead derived from a restricted catchment within southern Australia. Hf isotopic data presented here fingerprint the original source of the upper delta lobe zircons to NE Australia, with data comparing well similar similar U-Pb and Lu-Hf isotopic data from the Lachlan Orogen, the New England Orogen, the eastern Musgraves Province and the northern Flinders Ranges. The data is not preclude a model where the lobe is derived from recycled Eromanga Basin sediments durin ga phase of late Cretaceous inland Australian uplift, but when coupled with reconnaissance low-temperature thermochronometry from the region of the Ceduna River course indicating widespread Triassic-Jurassic exhumation, and comparisons with detrital zircon data from the Winton Formation upstream of any proposed uplift, we suggest that both lobes of the Ceduna Delta are likely to be derived from a transcontinental Ceduna River.