Tag

metamorphic

13 posts

• 08 July 2026The 520-Million-Year-Old Trench That Still Holds a Continent TogetherHow the 520-million-year-old Kanmantoo Trench off South Australia—a subduction zone that jammed—stitched the Australian continent together and left a belt of metamorphic rock still exposed today.
• 06 July 2026The 1.1-Billion-Year-Old Magma Chamber That Became a Mountain RangeHow a 1.1-billion-year-old magma chamber in South Australia's Mount Painter Province cooked the surrounding rock into rare radioactive minerals, then rose from the earth as a mountain range that still
• 05 July 2026The 1.8-Billion-Year-Old River That Still Runs Below the Red CentreHow 1.8-billion-year-old river gravels beneath central Australia became the source of the continent's finest pink diamonds—diamonds coloured by plastic deformation during a 320-million-year-old collis
• 26 June 2026The 640-Million-Year-Old Volcano That Melted a Mountain of CopperHow a 640-million-year-old submarine volcanic arc in western Tasmania became the Mount Lyell copper-gold deposit—born from black smokers, hardened by metamorphism, and exposed by 100 million years of
• 25 June 2026The 3.5-Billion-Year-Old Sea That Built the World's Oldest SapphiresHow 3.5-billion-year-old metamorphism in Western Australia's Yilgarn Craton created some of Earth's oldest sapphires—long before the gem was thought possible.
• 20 June 2026The 500-Million-Year-Old Seafloor That Became Australia's Largest Sapphire DepositsHow 500-million-year-old metamorphism in central New South Wales transformed a deep-seafloor into the continent's richest sapphire deposits, where rubies and sapphires still wash from ancient gravels.
• 20 June 2026The River That Became a 250-Million-Year-Old Jade: South Australia's Cowell NephriteHow 250-million-year-old metamorphism in South Australia's Eyre Peninsula transformed a magnesium-rich seafloor into one of the world's finest nephrite jade deposits—a stone carved by First Nations pe
• 20 June 2026The Ash That Turned a Seafloor to Sapphire 50 Million Years Before the Alps RoseHow 450-million-year-old volcanic ash in central New South Wales was metamorphosed into one of the world's only known sapphire-in-anthracite deposits, recording a lost volcanic arc along the margin of
• 19 June 2026The Fire That Turned a Reef to Marble: Tasmania's Mole Creek KarstHow 400-million-year-old limestone beneath Tasmania's Great Western Tiers was baked by Jurassic intrusions into rare calcite marble, then carved by water into one of Australia's most extensive cave sy
• 24 May 2026The Magma That Built a Mountain of Jade: Western Australia's Enderby Island NephriteHow 1.2-billion-year-old metamorphism in Western Australia's Enderby Island created one of the world's largest deposits of nephrite jade, recording a collision between two ancient continents.
• 24 May 2026The Magma That Forged a World of Green and Black: Tasmania's Serpentine HillsHow 500-million-year-old oceanic crust in Tasmania was thrust onto land, altered to serpentinite, and created a landscape of toxic soils, rare minerals, and the state's only nickel mine.
• 22 May 2026The Magma That Tempered a Billion-Year Blade: Western Australia's Mount AugustusHow 1.6-billion-year-old granite and metamorphosed sandstone in Western Australia's Mount Augustus record a story of deep burial, regional heat, and the slow exhumation of a continent.
• 12 May 2026The Gneiss That Remembers: The Proterozoic Basement of the Gawler CratonBeneath South Australia's Gawler Craton lies 1.7-billion-year-old gneiss—rock once buried 25 kilometres deep, now exposed by tectonic uplift and erosion, that records the assembly of Proterozoic Austr