Manuel Pubellier

• PhD & HDR
• Research Director at French National Centre for Scientific Research

Continental rifting, as the initial and critical phase of the Wilson Cycle, has been extensively observed and studied using 2D and 3D analogue and numerical models. These studies have effectively reproduced the characteristics of wide and narrow, symmetric and asymmetric rift structures, through horizontal multi-layered models with variable strengt...

Along the northern strike-slip boundary of the Caribbean plate, strain is partitioned and accommodated by the relative motion of several microplates. Among these microplates, the Gonâve microplate is bounded by two major strike-slip fault systems: the Enriquillo Plantain Garden Fault Zone (EPGFZ) to the south and the Septentrional-Oriente Fault Zon...

The South America Map of the Orogens is part of the project IGCP–667 World Map of the Orogens of Unesco and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). It is led by the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW). This project aims to design a digital global map for geological time layers that shows the mountain ranges formed t...

The geometric properties of the Earth's magnetic field and its capture in the rock record make possible to track the position of ancestral continents and oceans, and therefore to study the history and the dynamics of plates from the Precambrian to the Present. However, too few well-constrained paleomagnetic data are available for Precambrian rocks,...

Continental growth is mostly made of crustal morphostructures docked at active margins, but also accreted material scrapped off the downgoing plate, as well magmatic material injected in the upper plate. The process of continental plates drifting is nevertheless continuous and only punctuated by relatively short-lived deformation events. Since the...

The Palawan collision has for long been inferred from the regional geological record. However, precise constraints on the timing of major orogenic growth is limited, relying mostly on variably available biostratigraphic dating of the erosive products in the surrounding offshore basins. Here, we present new thermochronologic dating results constrain...

On pense classiquement que les orogènes se développent dans un contexte de convergence impliquant deux ou plusieurs plaques de nature continentale et/ou océanique. Ils sont définis comme des zones crustales déformées présentant un relief et se développant à partir de la subduction arc-continent, de la collision continentale ou des bassins de rift i...

Plain Language Summary Most scientists agree that the South China Sea formed within the China margin through the subduction of an ancient oceanic plate, known as the Proto South China Sea (PSCS), beneath Borneo. Today, this oceanic plate has nearly vanished from the Earth's surface. Only a few scattered fragments found on the islands of Borneo and...

The Unimak and Shumagin segments of the Alaska Aleutian Subduction Zone show extensional deformation of the forearc since the Miocene. Using legacy seismic profiles and modern multichannel seismic data, we update the structural map of the area, focusing on the intersection between trench-parallel, landward-dipping normal faults rooting in the plate...

The East Vietnam Sea (EVS) or the South China Sea (SCS in this paper) is one of the best-studied basins in the world and one of the largest marginal basins. If the mechanisms of rifting and spreading are well documented and invoke many specific aspects of structure and evolution, it has nevertheless been highly controversial in terms of its relatio...

Des datations et des concepts plus précis sur les déformations crustales en extension et en compression permettent actuellement d’appréhender l’évolution spatio-temporelle des discordances stratigraphiques et donc les pics de déformation. Les marges continentales, bien documentées par la sismique réflexion montrent que l’extension et la rupture con...

Orogens are classically thought to develop in a convergence context involving two or more plates of continental and/or oceanic nature. They are defined as deformed crustal areas with topographic building developing from either arc-continent subduction, continental collision or inverted rift basins. However, this definition does not take into accoun...

Orogens develop in convergent settings involving two or more continental and/or oceanic plates. They are traditionally defined as zones of crustal deformation associated with mountain building resulting from either accretion of a terrane and/or an arc, continent-continent collision or rift-inversion. However, this definition does not consider the g...

Orogens develop in convergent settings involving two or more continental and/or oceanic plates. They are traditionally defined as zones of crustal deformation associated with mountain building resulting from either accretion of a terrane and/or an arc, continent-continent collision or rift-inversion. However, this definition does not consider the g...

Orogens form in convergence settings involving two or more continental and/or oceanic plates. They are traditionally defined as zones of crustal deformation associated with mountain building resulting from either the accretion of an arc, a continent-continent collision or the inversion of a rift basin. However, this somewhat narrow definition does...

Using high quality regional seismic lines, we evidence major structures resulting from successive phases of tectonic events that affected the Luconia shelf from the Upper Cretaceous to Pliocene. Each tectonic event (Classified as Event 1–Event 3) is associated with different episodes of limestone growth in Luconia Province. The successive limestone...

The Arabian Sea in the NW Indian Ocean is a place where two major transform boundaries are currently active : the Owen Fracture Zone between India and Arabia and the Owen Transform between India and Somalia. These transform systems result from the fragmentation of the India-Africa Transform boundary, which initiated about 90 Myrs ago, when the Indi...

Our understanding of continent-ocean transition structures and magmatism in the absence of excessive magmatic additions has been guided by the observations and models developed at the magma-poor Iberia-Newfoundland conjugate margins. Recently these models have been challenged in the South China Sea in light of new IODP Expeditions 367-368-368X. We...

Structural pattern in Luconia, Sarawak

The Indian Plate commenced its northward migration towards Eurasia in the Early Cretaceous. The lateral effect of this migration on the western edge of the Sunda Plate in Southeast Asia still remains equivocal. In order to assess this effect, we evaluate several key sectors characterized by deep crustal exhumation along a N-S transect from the sout...

The polyphased propagation of the deformation, generally suspected in rift systems, remains often poorly defined in terms of timing and fault reactivation and the role of transversal discontinuities in the crust is often poorly understood during the overall extensional history of a basin. Herein, we present some new concepts about the evolution of...

We investigate the crustal structure of the Dangerous Ground (South China Sea) through processing and interpretation of coincident wide‐angle reflection and refraction seismic data. Continental crust of Dangerous Ground has been moderately thinned, down to 15 km, so that most of the structures accompanying the early opening of the South China Sea f...

Attention has been given to the relevance of chaotic rock units including tectonic, sedimentary, and diapiric mélanges in the evolution of subduction-related accretionary complexes but they have often been perceived as relicts in suture zones. Northwest Borneo (West Sabah) was evidently a subduction complex which experienced collision caused by the...

The main rationale of the IGCP 667 project is to perform a map (1/10 000 000) of world (ancient and modern) orogens and to represent them along the geological history of the Earth. Therefore, the definition of an orogen is critical and obliges us to go back to the fundamentals of geology by identifying the key elements of an orogen and place them a...

In rift systems, the role of crustal discontinuities is often taken into account regarding the basin orientation at the initiation of the extension. However, it remains enigmatic during subsequent rifting propagation. Herein, we specifically investigate the effects of fault systems of the Caledonian orogeny onto the Porcupine Basin (offshore Irelan...

Seafloor spreading can be explained by different dynamic mechanisms, magmatically or tectonically dominated. The Southwest Sub‐basin, located at the southwest tip of the propagating seafloor spreading of the South China Sea, remains unclear for its spreading regime owing to poor and debated knowledge of the crustal structures. Here two multichannel...

Seafloor spreading can be explained by different dynamic mechanisms, magmatically or tectonically dominated. The Southwest Sub‐basin, located at the southwest tip of the propagating seafloor spreading of the South China Sea, remains unclear for its spreading regime owing to poor and debated knowledge of the crustal structures. Here, two multi‐chann...

You can find the full text at https://rdcu.be/2j7C Outcome of decades of two-dimensional modeling of lithosphere deformation under extension is that mechanical coupling between continental crust and the underlying mantle controls how a continent breaks apart to form a new ocean. However, geological observations unequivocally show that continental...

Offshore Ireland, the North Atlantic opening is generally interpreted as successive, 10-to-15-Myr-long, rifting events during the Mesozoic. However, their interaction is poorly documented in terms of structural inheritance and fault reactivation. From extensive seismic and well data in the northern Porcupine Basin, we show that extension actually e...

The South China Sea (SCS) is presented here as a case example to demonstrate the evolution of basins developed at convergent boundaries. The structural map published in 2017 by CGMW at the 1:3 million scale allows to visualize the location of the rifting faults from a normal to hyper-extended crust, the shape and structure of the oceanic crust and...

Reactivation of extensional structures is commonly inferred during rift evolution. In that context, we present original seismic interpretation to explore the geometry and interactions of three successive rifting events in the Coral Sea region, Papua New Guinea. The first event (R1), poorly documented, occurred during the Triassic along an older N-S...

Carbonates of Central Luconia, Malaysia, had been serving as hydrocarbon reservoirs for more than 25 years. However, the relationship and impacts of extensive tectonic events to the growth of Miocene carbonates in Central Luconia have not been revealed sufficiently. In this work, two carbonates platforms in the southern part of Central Luconia were...

Sedimentary basins often develop above internal zones of former orogenic belts. We hereafter consider the Malay Peninsula (Western Sunda) as a crustal high separating two regions of stretched continental crust; the Andaman/Malacca basins in the western side and the Thai/Malay basins in the east. Several stages of rifting have been documented thanks...

Mesozoic faulting has been recognised in several Irish sedimentary basins as part of the northward propagation of the Atlantic rift system. However, the contribution of older structural elements remains poorly constrained. The present study documents the succession of extensional phases in the northern part of the Porcupine Basin sensu largo, offsh...

The Lengguru wedge in West Papua is younger than 10 Myr and is a result of oblique and fast subduction (11cm/yr) of the Bird's Head, a part of the Australian margin beneath the Melanesian Arc. Thus, the formation of this wedge, recently and very rapidly, may be attributed to a single tectonic event. High pressure (HP) metabasic and metased-imentary...

Empirical models have simulated the consequences of uplift and orographic-precipitation on the evolution of orogens whereas the effects of these forcings on ridgelines and consequent topography of natural landscapes remain equivocal. Here we demonstrate the feedback of a terrestrial landscape in NW Borneo subject to uplift and precipitation gradien...

The Paleozoic limestone of Kinta Valley formed a narrow deformed strip between the Late Triassic - Early Jurassic batholiths of the northern Peninsular Malaysia. Because of the advanced stage of karstification, it is difficult to understand the deformation events that affected the limestone. We use outcrop remote sensing mapping, outcrop examples a...

Understanding processes of formation of accretionary wedges requires studying young and well preserved examples. The Lengguru wedge (West Papua) is younger than 10 Myr and is a result of oblique and fast subduction (11 cm/yr) of the Bird's Head (a part of the Australian margin beneath the Melanesian Arc). Thus, the rapid formation of this wedge (ac...

The Coral Sea Basin, offshore Papua New Guinea, is generally described as a rift propagator that opened through the Australian craton during the Late Cretaceous. Rifting was later followed by spreading activity during Palaeocene to lowermost Eocene times and basin inversion during the Cenozoic. Herein, we specifically describe the extensional struc...

In the wee hours of 5th June, 2015, NW Borneo was jolted by a 6.0 magnitude earthquake, caused by fault movement at a shallow depth of 10 km. The quake that originated from near the foot of the picturesque Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, was felt as far as 350 km away from the epicentre and has produced more than 90 aftershocks to date; ranging in magnitude...

The Coral Sea Basin propagator, offshore Papua New Guinea, opened through the Australian margin and partially isolated a crustal block of continental nature, the so-called Southern Papuan Block. Part of this crustal block is already subducted underneath Papua New Guinea. Inland topography and morphostructures of the Southern Papuan Block suggest a...

The Main Range of Peninsular Malaysia is a batholith that extends over more than 500km from Malacca in the South to the Thailand border in the North. It results from the subduction/accretion history of the western margin of Sunda Plate by Late Triassic times. We present a structural analysis based on geomorphology, field observations and geochronol...

More than 50 % of the surface of Kinta Valley is covered by alluvium overlying Paleozoic sequences and Late Triassic granitic intrusions. The alluvium of the valley is thin (mostly less than 30 m thick). Limestone and shale are the dominant lithologies cropping out in the valley, and they have been severely deformed. Unfortunately, these rocks are...

The South China Sea is the largest marginal basin of SE Asia, yet its mechanism of formation is still debated. A 1000-km long wide-angle refraction seismic profile was recently acquired along the conjugate margins of the SW sub-basin of the South China Sea, over the longest extended continental crust. A joint reflection and refraction seismic trave...

The morphology of Carbonate platforms may be influenced by tectonic activity and eustatic variations. 3D seismic data and satellite imagery are used in order to investigate the morphological similarities between present-day carbonates platforms, East of Borneo Island and Miocene carbonate platforms of the South China Sea. The morphological similari...

Rifting of continental margins is generally diachronous along the zones where continents break due to various factors including the boundary conditions which trigger the extensional forces, but also the internal physical boundaries which are inherent to the composition and thus the geological history of the continental margin. Being opened quite re...

Using 3D seismic and well data, detailed seismic interpretation has been conducted on two carbonate Platforms EX and FY located in the Central Luconia Province, Malaysia. The results provide an insight to understand the relationship of faulting with syn-depositional carbonate growth. Five geo-seismic units were interpreted from the Late Oligocene t...

Kinta Valley was one of the most productive tin mining areas in the world towards the end of 19th century and continued to be so for another century. Due to its thriving economy and affluence, there was rapid development in the valley. The geology of the valley has been studied in detail for the purpose of prospecting for new tin deposits and more...

The link between the deformation of southern and central Palawan Island and the deformation of the adjacent offshore wedge is investigated. The wedge is a continuation of the Palawan fold and thrust belt and bounds the Borneo-Palawan trough to the Dangerous Grounds and to Palawan Island. Key parameters for the understanding of the development of th...

The Sarawak Basin is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon bearing basins in South East Asia. However, extensive debates and hypotheses concerning its origin have perplexed the Asian scientific community for long. The quest for revealing the birth of this basin is an amalgamation of various data and studies. Subsidence history can throw light on the...

The Malay Basin is located offshore West Malaysia in the South China Sea, within north central region of 1st order Sunda Block. The basin developed partly as a result of tectonic collisions and strike-slip shear of the Southeast Asia continental slabs, as the Indian Plate collided into Eurasia, and subsequent extrusion of lithospheric blocks toward...

Tectonism constitutes one of the major controls of sediment in-fill within sedimentary basins around the world. Understanding the tectonic activity that shaped the architecture of the basin and aided in facies distribution, plays a vital role in basin analysis and forward modeling. A few outcrops from the Nyalau Formation in Bintulu, Sarawak, East...

Tectonics in addition to other environmental factors impacts the growth of carbonate platforms and plays an important role in shaping the internal architecture of the platforms. Detailed of faults and fractures development and healing in carbonate environment have not been explored sufficiently. Using 3D seismic and well data, we attempt to reconst...

Coastal basins have been greatly influenced worldwide by the geological heritage (lithology, structural control) and eustatic sea-level fluctuation. Along the western side of Peninsular Malaysia, both the Tertiary-Quaternary stratigraphy basement structures, and geomorphology is poorly known. Along the coast, the zone is characterized by an absence...

The continental breakup which gave way to the formation of the oceanic South China Sea (SCS) basin began in the latest Cretaceous in the northeastern SCS and propagated in southern and western direction over a long period of time, possibly more than 40 m.y. The seafloor spreading history of the South China Sea has been interpreted in different ways...

The morphology of Carbonate platforms may be influenced by tectonic activity and eustatic variations. 3D seismic data and satellite imagery are used in order to investigate the morphological similarities between Present-day carbonates platforms, East of Borneo Island and Miocene carbonate platforms of the South China Sea. The morphological similari...

Most of the basins developed in the continental core of SE Asia (Sundaland) evolved since the Late Cretaceous in a manner that may be correlated to the conditions of the subduction in the Sunda Trench. By the end of Mesozoic times Sundaland was an elevated area composed of granite and metamorphic basement on the rims; which suffered collapse and in...

The unconformity characteristics supplemented with tentative ages indicate that Luconia and the southern Dangerous Grounds were sub-aerial during the Early Miocene, while the Reed Bank, the northern Dangerous Grounds and parts of the central Dangerous Grounds were mostly submerged except for some islands concentrated on the western edge of the Born...

The Phu Khan basin is one of the sub-basins opened during the rifting of the South China Sea during the Eocene. The basin is located against the East-Vietnam Boundary Fault (EVBF) to the west and the oceanic crust to the east. Good quality seismic lines allow us to observe structures which highlight the rifting history of the South China Sea margin...

The link between the deformation of southern and central Palawan Island, Philippines and the deformation of the adjacent offshore wedge is investigated. The wedge is a continuation of the Palawan fold and thrust belt and bounds the Borneo–Palawan Trough to the Dangerous Grounds and to Palawan Island. Key parameters for the understanding of the form...

Interpretation of two Miocene carbonate platforms in Southeastern part of Central Luconia Province has provided an insight of the structural history of the platforms, relating syn-depositional faulting with the platform evolution and it’s internal architecture. Six horizons have been interpreted on both platforms. These horizons represent four diff...

The existence of an active compression on the frontal fold-and-thrust belt (FTB) of the NW Borneo Wedge is a long debate. Because of the absence of seismicity, the frontal FTB is traditionally considered as inactive and generally attributed to the thin-skin gravity-driven Baram Basin. However, there are some signs of convergence and compression (GP...

We review the processes of accretion of continental blocks during the Tertiary in SE Asia and the western Pacific with the aim of better understanding the evolution of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt, which is a Neoproterozoic to mid-Phanerozoic orogenic collage surrounded by the East European, Siberian, Tarim, and North China cratons. In the weste...

Seismic reflection data imaging conjugate crustal sections at the South China Sea margins result in a conceptual model for rift-evolution at conjugate magma-poor margins in time and space. The wide Early Cenozoic South China Sea rift preserves the initial rift architecture at the distal margins. Most distinct are regular undulations in the crust-ma...

The opening of South China Sea was preceded by extension in the northern margin during the Late Cretaceous-Cenozoic. Recent studies have pointed to possible subduction of an oceanic ridge in East Asia, which necessarily implies the subduction of a slab with increasing density over time. In this study, we used a numerical procedure to simulate the k...

The Niger and Brunei Deltas are two of the major prolific petroleum deltas of the world. As a result, large datasets of 2D and 3D seismic are available. However, some of the structures remain poorly understood because they are poorly imaged and a “shale diapir interpretation” has often prevailed.These two deltas are, in places, driven by particular...

The elongated island of Palawan, bounded by two marginal basins, the South China Sea to the North and the Sulu Sea to the South is composed of remnants of an inverted basin (Proto-South China Sea) thrusted onto the margin of a continental terrane which rifted away from the Chinese-Vietnamese margin. Based on field observations coupled with seismic...

The Longmen Shan range, located at the eastern border of the Tibetan plateau (Sichuan province, China), is characterized by one of the most important topographic gradient of the world whereas the present-day convergence recorded by GPS measurements is quite low (~3mm/yr). The mountain is also located above an abrupt 18km-high Moho step interpreted...

The present-day crustal structure of the Longmen Shan highlights an abrupt 18km-high Moho step between the 63km-thick Tibetan crust and the 45km-thick Yangtze craton (figure 1). This crustal contrast is associated with a topographic gradient of about 10% whereas there is almost no present-day horizontal convergence across the range. We perform a pl...

The South China Sea is surrounded by magma-poor or non-volcanic rifted margins like Iberia, Newfoundland and southern Australia. We focus on the southeastern margin between the Reed Bank Block and the W-Luzon basin. Several BGR surveys, the last one in 2008, have established a database of more than 5.000 km of regional multi-channel reflection seis...

Terra Nova, 23, 232–240, 2011 Subduction of oceanic highs has been described in offshore accretionary wedges thanks to bathymetric and seismic data, and simulated in sand-box models. Where documented, it is limited to oceanic subduction of small culminations (seamounts). However, tracing this phenomenon in ancient and/or uplifted belts remains a ch...

High pressure metasediments together with retrogressed eclogites and migmatites have been found in the internal part of the Lengguru prism (Wandamen peninsula, W-Papua). The tectonic context is very active in this area with convergence rate between Australia and Caroline plates that reach 11 cm/yr. Our tectonic study (Bailly et al., 2009) shows tha...