Cretaceous Forearc Sedimentation and Contemporary Basin Tectonics in Northwestern Borneo: New Sedimentological Insights from Pedawan Formation, Kuching Zone, East Malaysia

Abstract

Sedimentary successions developed at the destructive plate margin settings are extremely important as they bear valuable record of contemporary basin tectonics and consequent sedimentation. Intense deformation and metamorphism often obliterate the primary sedimentary texture and structures of the sedimentary successions formed at destructive plate margins. However, sedimentological analysis of young unmetamorphosed forearc successions provides rare opportunity to infer the interplay between tectonics and sedimentation. Therefore, a process-based sedimentological facies analysis and provenance studies of the Cretaceous Pedawan Formation in the Kuching Zone, Borneo, have been undertaken for the first time. The sandstones are compositionally and texturally immature. They are normally graded with sole marks and have erosional lower contacts with mudstones and generally have gradational upper contacts. The massive sandstones, parallel-laminated sandstones, and the combination of rippled sandstones with thin mudstones are interpreted as turbidites. The lack of wave-generated structures, including hummocky cross stratification, indicates that deposition took place below storm wave base, possibly in a shelf setting. The lower part of the Pedawan Formation is mudstone dominated, and the upper part progressively becomes sandstone dominated. The Pedawan Formation bears several penecontemporaneously deformed horizons sandwiched between laterally persistent undeformed beds. Deformation structures include folds with reclined to recumbent geometry and layer-confined normal and reverse faults. We have interpreted these deformed horizons as seismites. Modal analyses of the sandstones indicate recycled orogenic as well as arc provenance and thus indicate mixing of recycled orogenic sediments with arc-derived volcanic material. The sedimentary facies characteristics of the Pedawan Formation in combination with numerous penecontemporaneous deformation features at selected stratigraphic levels indicate that the turbidites formed in a seismically active deepwater depositional setting as part of a long-lived subduction complex in eastern Sundaland during which several crustal fragments were accreted to Borneo.