Abstract

The Salawati Basin of western New Guinea and the Tomori Basin of eastern Sulawesi, Indonesia, are two sedimentary basins located either side of the main fault strands in the Sorong fault zone strike-slip system. It is suggested that prior to displacement on the Sorong system the two formed a single sedimentary basin. Movement on the Sorong system occurred largely during the latest Miocene-Quaternary, contemporaneous with deposition of a clastic sedimentary succession. An older basinal sequence, essentially Miocene in age, is composed predominantly of carbonate sediments, and this may have formed part of the foreland basin sequence related to the east Sulawesi orogenic belt. Correlation of the Salawati and Tomori Basins implies a left-lateral displacement of about 900 km on part of the Sorong fault zone.