Structural heritage and planation in the evolution of landforms in the East Kimberley

Abstract

The modern landscape of the East Kimberley bears the imprint of geological constraints inherited from the Palaeozoic and Precambrian. These constraints include continental rifting, basin geometry and depositional style, variable diagenesis and relict weathering. This ancient heritage in the modern landscape is just as important as that of sequential uplift and denudation during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Moreover as this region stood above the level of the Cretaceous transgressions, the broad outline of the topography is a Gondwanan relict. Only the final phase of valley cutting seems to be post‐Miocene. The great antiquity of the denudational and especially the structural heritage of shield and platform terrain like the Kimberley is at odds with the emphasis given to rapidity of change by geomorphological theory.