Pleistocene shorelines at Porirua Harbour, near Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract

This paper deals only with ancient shoreline features found near the northern and eastern shorelines of the Pauatahanui Inlet of Porirua Harbour. Correspondence of the heights of these features with heights of Pleistocene shorelines overseas is remarkably close. Although Porirua Harbour lies in a tectonically unstable environment, a hypothesis advanced by Cotton (1952) suggests that the Harbour itself may have largely escaped the effects of recent differential earth movements. Pleistocene shorelines could well be preserved in such a locality, and terraces are correlated by height with the (post-glacial) thermal maximum, Late Monastirian, Main Monastirian, Tyrrhenian, Milazzian, and Sicilian shorelines of other regions.