THIS PAPER IS NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THE EXAMINATION HALLS

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

GL5151

MSc and Postgraduate Diploma

for External Students

PETROLEUM GEOSCIENCE

Tectonics and Lithosphere Dynamics

Monday 6th June 2011: 2.30 4.30 pm

Candidates should answer 3 questions. Each answer should take about 40 minutes.
Use a SEPARATE answer book for each section.

University of London 2010

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1. This is a question about extended continental margins, those places that are left behind
after a continental rift zone evolves into a new ocean floored by oceanic lithosphere.
a. Draw a cross section of a magma-poor (or non-volcanic) extended continental
margin, including a vertical and horizontal scale and labels of important features.
(40%)
b. Explain what process is thought to be responsible for the absence of the lower
crust in the outer parts of margins like these. (20%)
c. With reference to observations from the East African rift zone, what mechanism
dominates the accommodation of plate divergence in settings like these? (20%)
d. Suggest ways in which the development of such margins might influence the
petroleum systems that develop in them. (20%)
2. This is a question about the processes that lead to the formation of sedimentary basins on
top of the lithosphere.
a. Reflection seismic surveys through two sedimentary basins show that each is
symmetrical, with a deep central portion and shallower edges. The data are not
clear at depths much below the top of basement, making it difficult for you to tell
anything much about the crustal structure in each case. From looking at the basin
fill, you know however that one of the basins formed by stretching of the
lithosphere, the other by flexure of the lithosphere. For both basins, sketch and
label the various sedimentary sequences, and the time they took to accumulate.
(40%)
b. You also have two gravity profiles, one each crossing each of the two basins. The
gravity profiles confirm your interpretation of one basin forming by extension, the
other by flexure. Sketch the two gravity profiles. (20%)
c. With reference to the likely subsidence history you would observe in a basin of
each type, what kind of organic rich rocks might you expect to accumulate in each
case? (20%)
d. With reference to the different tectonic origins of the two basins, would you
expect structural or stratigraphic traps to dominate petroleum systems in each
case? (20%)
3. This is a question about the tectonics of the Tibetan Plateau.

a. In the 1980s, movements of parts of the Tibetan Plateau along prominent

strike-slip faults were famously modelled in the laboratory with the use of
plasticene modelling clay. How was the experiment interpreted in terms
of the process by which continental convergence in the India-Eurasia
collision zone is accommodated? (25%)
b. Sometime later, numerical modelling also recreated some of the features of
the plateau quite convincingly, but started by assuming the continental
convergence was accommodated by a very different process: describe the
process and how the strike-slip faults may have been related to it. (35%)
c. Measurements made with GPS equipment have also been used to test these
two models; what have they shown? (20%)

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d. Why might GPS measurements taken at the top surface of the upper crust
be difficult to interpret in terms of the second (numerical) model for
convergence-related processes? (20%)
4. This is a question about making and using paleogeographic maps.
a. Draw sketches illustrating how to use Euler rotations when creating
paleogeographic maps for times during the last 180 million years, using
multiple fracture zones (10%) and magnetic anomalies (10%).
b. Why are paleogeographic maps showing times before 180 Ma less reliable?
(40%)
c. The attached paleogeographic map (Figure 1) shows the South Atlantic
Ocean at 118 Ma. At the present day the Walvis Ridge is a submerged
basaltic ridge, about 2-4 km deep, from which volcanic samples dating to
~130-120 Ma have been dredged. What significance might all this
information have for petroleum systems in the region north of the Walvis
Ridge? (40%)

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5. This is a question about the places on Earth where continents on two neighbouring
plates collide with each other.
a. Why is it that continental convergence can come to be accommodated over
very wide collision zones that do not resemble the narrow plate boundaries
seen in many other regions on Earth? (40%)
b. Sketch or describe in words the ways in which continent-continent
convergence is accommodated in the following regions:
i) the Zagros mountains (15%);
ii) (NE Iran around the Dasht e Lut desert (15%),
iii) the Tibetan Plateau. (20%)
c. Describe how the particular response to collision in the Zagros has helped
shape the petroleum system there. (10%)

END OF PAPER

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