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Upper Miocene to lower Pliocene sedimentary rocks on Macquarie Island are dominantly volcaniclastic breccia, sandstone, and siltstone produced by the physical disintegration and tectonic abrasion of oceanic crust in fault zones and mass wasting of these tectonic features. They represent small debris fans and small-scale turbidites deposited at the base of active fault scarps, related to Late Miocene to Early Pliocene seafloor spreading. Most of the sediment is derived from basalts, hut diabase and gabbro clasts in some sedimentary rocks indicate that middle and lower oceanic crust was exposed to erosion on the sea floor. A lack of exotic clasts and a low degree of clast roundness are consistent with a local source for the sediment and no input from continental rocks. Spatial relationships between sedimentary rocks and major faults associated with seafloor spreading on the island and correlation between sedimentary clast and adjacent up-thrown block compositions allow us to infer paleotectonic relief for Macquarie Island crust during deposition. Our data support a model involving the deposition of these rocks at the inside corner of a ridge-transform intersection. Furthermore, a tectonic reconstruction of the Australian-Pacific plate boundary for the approximate time that Macquarie Island crust formed (10.9 Ma) also shows that Macquarie Island crust most likely formed near a ridge-transform intersection. This paper describes sedimentation associated with active faulting at a ridge-transform intersection that has been uplifted in situ above sea level along with the surrounding oceanic crust, and demonstrates that high-angle faults have the most pronounced influence, compared with low-angle faults, on sedimentation in this tectonic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macquarie Island consists of uplifted oceanic crust, uniquely situated in the ocean basin where it formed, thus allowing onshore structures to be placed into their regional oceanic tectonic context. The Finch-Langdon fault, the most significant spreading-related structure on the island, juxtaposes upper-crust rocks against lowercrust and upper-mantle rocks. It consists of dominantly oblique strike-slip, northwest-, west-northwest-, and north-northeaststriking fault segments that bear hydrothermal mineralization indicative of faulting during seafioor spreading. Talus breccias and graywackes overlain by volcanic flows proximal to the fault indicate a long-lived submarine fault scarp that exposed diabase dikes and gabbros during volcanism. Swath reflectivity and bathymetry reveal ridge-parallel spreading fabric and perpendicular fracture zones, the closest ∼7 km east of the island. On the basis of field and swath data, we propose that this fault zone formed near the inside corner of a ridge-transform intersection and that structures on the island are conformable with those in the surrounding seafloor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]