New Zealand Landscape: Behind the Scene

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Chapter 1

The Creation of Zealandia

Abstract

This chapter considers the origin of New Zealand and addresses the issues of why it is located in the southwest Pacific Ocean and why it has a long narrow shape with a northeast–southwest orientation. The first matter is resolved by recognising that New Zealand is the emergent part of a microcontinent called Zealandia that broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwana about 82 million years ago (Ma). It was moved east as the Tasman Sea opened and now straddles the boundary of two converging plates: the Australian Plate and the Pacific Plate. Most of Zealandia is submerged, but tectonic compression along the plate interface pushed some of it above water. This accounts for New Zealand's linear form and orientation. Fragments of the land surface of Gondwana are recognisable in the modern landscape of New Zealand, having been exhumed from beneath a more recent sedimentary cover.

Keywords

Gondwana; Zealandia; Pacific Plate; Australian Plate; Cretaceous Peneplain; Waipounamu erosion surface; Otago Peneplain; Tasman Sea; Southern Ocean; Pacific Ocean

New Zealand is a long narrow country oriented NE–SW in the southwest Pacific, the world's largest and oldest ocean (Fig. 1.1). Why is New Zealand there and the shape it is? A sharp crested range of mountains runs along the spine of South Island, but in North Island the high land consists mainly of large volcanoes and high dissected plateaux, with relatively few razor-back ridges and craggy peaks. What explains this: why did a chain of sharp high mountains develop in one place, yet dissected plateaux and volcanoes in the other? Questions of this sort require answering if we are to understand the origin of New Zealand and its landscape. Big picture issues such as these will be addressed in the early chapters of this book. Answers will be offered, but they cannot be final or absolute, because our scientific understanding evolves as research progresses. Local place names will be unfamiliar to many readers, so to assist with geographical details, regional names and localities cited in the text are shown in Fig. 1.2.

Fig. 1.1 The islands of New Zealand in the southwest Pacific Ocean. Australia lies 1870 km to the west of New Zealand's northern tip and 1490 km to the west of Fiordland. © 2016 Google Earth image Landsat.

Fig. 1.2 New Zealand regional and place names. Ad , Auckland; Hn , Hamilton; Ta , Tauranga; Ra , Rotorua; To , Taupo; NP , New Plymouth; Nr , Napier; Wn , Wellington; Nn , Nelson; Wt , Westport; Ka , Kaikoura; Ha , Hokitika; Ch , Christchurch; Tu , Timaru; Ou , Oamaru; Qn , Queenstown; Dn , Dunedin; In , Invercargill.

Setting the Scene

Present day New Zealand is the exposed part of a largely submerged continent named Zealandia. This has been confirmed by rock sampling (dredged samples from the seafloor) and geophysical exploration, as explained by Mortimer and Campbell (2014) (Fig. 1.3). Zealandia covers almost 5 million square kilometres (5 M km²), rather more than half the size of the Australian continent (8.92 M km²). The floor of the Pacific Ocean where Zealandia is located is made up of tectonic plates that move in relation to each other (Fig. 1.4), and the continental crust of Zealandia is bisected by the boundary of two of these: the Pacific Plate and the Australian Plate (also known as the Indo–Australian Plate) (Fig. 1.5). The tectonic plates are not fixed but, like gears, rotate in relation to each other although the centres of rotation slowly migrate over time.

Fig. 1.3 This map shows New Zealand to be the emergent part of a small continent that is largely below sea level. The boundary of continental rocks is at about 2000 m depth. Map © NIWA, CANZ (Mitchell, J.S., Pallentin, A., Mackay, K.A., Wright, I.C., Aberdeen, J., Goh, A.). (2008). New Zealand region bathymetry. NIWA chart, miscellaneous series no. 85, Wellington: NIWA.

Fig. 1.4 Tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean basin. Arrows show direction of plate movement.

Fig. 1.5 Situation of Zealandia across the boundary of two tectonic plates in the southwest Pacific. From Mortimer, N., & Campbell, H. (2014). Zealandia: Our continent revealed. Penguin and GNS Science.

The Lord Howe Rise, Challenger Plateau and Norfolk Ridge to the northwest of New Zealand lie 500–2000 m below sea level and comprise continental crust situated on the Australian Plate, whereas the Chatham Rise and Campbell Plateau to the east and southeast of New Zealand are pieces of continental crust located on the Pacific Plate. This configuration of land and sea and the boundary between the two plates is relatively recent in the long history of New Zealand's evolution. The present plate boundary probably attained its position only about 10 Ma ago,¹ but New Zealand first started to achieve its separate identity when the Tasman Sea started to open, a rift propagating from south to north in several stages, initiating about 82 Ma and with spreading finally stopping about 52 Ma ago (Gaina et al., 1998). Several large blocks of continental crust, such as Lord Howe Rise, acted as microplates (like gigantic slabs of pack-ice) during this rifting, but when spreading ceased their combined adjoining area made up a composite piece of continental crust that we now recognise as Zealandia (Fig. 1.6).

Fig. 1.6 The separation of Zealandia from Gondwana. Based on Mortimer, N., & Campbell, H. (2014). Zealandia: Our continent revealed. Penguin and GNS Science.

The oldest sedimentary rocks in New Zealand are of Mid-Cambrian age, dating from about 510 Ma (Table 1.1). But some rocks contain older minerals that were eroded from the Paleoarchaean crust of a much older ancient supercontinent and then redeposited in later rocks. Sediments eroded from Gondwana accumulated in marine basins and were subsequently uplifted around 360 Ma ago in a mountain-building episode named the Tuhua Orogeny. The mountains created at that time were subsequently eroded, and the sediments from them accumulated in marine basins together with eroded fragments from nearby volcanoes. This occurred between 320 and 140 Ma ago, and when these sediments were buried, they were hardened into the greywacke rocks that are so characteristic of New Zealand mountains today (greywackes are resistant sandstone rocks composed of quartz, feldspar and fragments of preexisting rocks cemented in a muddy matrix). Sediment accumulation then ceased because of the commencement of a new mountain-building phase known as the Rangitata Orogeny. This culminated 145–100 Ma ago, was associated with the intrusion of huge granitic batholiths, and heralded the break-up of the Gondwana supercontinent.

Table 1.1

Geological Time Scale

Erosion of the Rangitata Mountains along the eastern edges of Gondwana had almost reached completion before the fragmentation of the supercontinent occurred, so that by 75 Ma ago the baselevelled remains of these mountains extended to the ocean. The land surface would have been an undulating plain, almost flat and near sea level, what earth scientists refer to as a peneplain (pene=near). Tensional forces on the eastern side of Gondwana in the Late Jurassic stretched and rifted the crust, eventually causing the Tasman Sea to start to open. Seafloor spreading commenced in the Late Cretaceous after about 82 Ma. By 75 Ma isolation of Zealandia was advanced, and by 60 Ma ago was almost complete (Sutherland & King, 2008), and so by then the Tasman Sea had reached its full width. At that time, the centre of what would eventually become North Island was located at about 55°S 170°W compared to its present position of 39°S and 176°E, so it has since moved northwest.

Somewhat later, rifting of southern Gondwana started to separate Antarctica from Australia. As a result the Southern Ocean began to form, the pace of separation accelerating around 55 Ma and continuing until 35 Ma ago. The outcome of the final separation of Australia from Antarctica about 35 Ma was dramatic, because this opened the Southern Ocean and permitted uninterrupted passage of winds, storms and ocean currents all around the Southern Hemisphere. The Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica had started to open around 43 Ma and, after intervals of constriction, finally rewidened about 15 Ma (Lagabrielle, Godderis, Donnadieu, Malavieille, & Suarez, 2009). In Antarctica, an ice cap began to accumulate after 34 Ma towards the close of the Eocene, but global average temperatures remained warmer than present until about 14 Ma (Naish & Barrett, 2008) and, after oscillating, became warmer again around 3.3–2.9 Ma ago (Rohling et al., 2014). So the rifting and seafloor spreading processes that affected Gondwana, the Pacific and the Americas led to the isolation of New Zealand and to its location in an oceanic environment.

As Gondwana was pulled apart by subcrustal forces, the stretching that affected its eastern margin caused the continental crust to thin, possibly to about half its normal thickness and, as it separated from the spreading ridge, the crust also cooled, contracted and became more dense, which encouraged it to settle further into the lithosphere. At the same time, ongoing erosion of the Rangitata Mountains had reduced them to low hills of perhaps 100 m relief. Hence by the end of the Cretaceous Period, around 66 Ma, Zealandia was a largely submerged continental slab surmounted by a few residual uplands protruding as scattered islands in a huge ocean. This was the culmination of tens of millions of years of denudation that had reduced the landscape almost to sea level. But there were still some islands. The whole of what was to become the South Island west coast remained exposed to subaerial erosion until the Mid-Eocene, and land appears to have been constantly present in parts of western North Island (Taranaki and part of the King Country) from the latest Eocene to the earliest Miocene (Bassett et al., 2014). Much of the Nelson region in northwest South Island still remained above sea level around 55–40 Ma and was a source of gravelly terrigenous sediment that we now see in cliffs near Pakawau and Cape Farewell in northwest Nelson (Rattenbury, Cooper, & Johnston, 1998). In central Otago in southern South Island, fluvial quartz conglomerates of the Hogburn Formation provide evidence of ongoing erosion and transport by rivers in the Eocene (Youngson, 2005).

One may appreciate that as subaerial erosion progressed and reduced the land closer and closer to sea level, so marine processes started to play an increasingly important role as the sea encroached across the coastal lowlands. Thus erosion of the low-level surface that was the culmination of terrestrial denudation continued offshore across an extensive shallow strandflat surmounted by occasional islands and stacks. This ancient extensive low-level surface can, in places, still be seen and is now referred to as the Waipounamu erosion surface. As the continental rocks of Zealandia subsided further into the cooling crust, most of the eroded surface, together with patches of terrestrial gravels, gradually submerged and ultimately became buried under thick accumulations of marine sediment; the superincumbent weight of sediments depressing it still further.

The drowning of terrestrial parts of Zealandia culminated about 25–23 Ma ago in the Late Oligocene. In places, basement rocks had become buried by thousands of metres of deltaic, estuarine and marine sediments. These materials gave rise to the sequence of Late Cretaceous to Paleogene and Neogene sedimentary rocks—mainly coal measures, mudstones, sandstones and limestones—that are found in many places today overlying the ancient basement rocks. The process of sediment accumulation started at different times in different places and also ended at different times in different places, but continued overall for around 50 million years. Whether or not the drowning of Zealandia constituted total submergence is still an open question, but it seems likely that a few small islands may always have persisted here and there, but not always in the same place.

The tectonic conditions that favoured marine deposition through the Paleogene and into the Neogene ended with the initiation of uplift as the plate boundary readjusted in the region. The forces that provoked this change were produced by the convergence of the Pacific and Australian Plates along a zone that ran diagonally across Zealandia. Uplift and coincident withdrawal of the sea commenced in some places about 23 Ma ago, but elsewhere was much later. The reemergence was spasmodic, in some places resulting in exposure, retrimming and then reburial of the Waipounamu surface. Such was the case near Auckland, where Paleogene sediments were eroded, in places down to the underlying greywacke surface, which consequently was exposed to retrimming by coastal processes, but then later reburied because of tectonic subsidence. Early Miocene shallow marine Kawau Subgroup sediments of the Waitemata Group mark this episode in the coastal landscape around Auckland (Photo 1.1).

Photo 1.1 Buried greywacke stacks beneath Early Miocene rocks at Kawau Island mark an episode of coastal erosion about 20 million years ago (20 Ma). Their reexposure in the modern era provides a ready-made coastal scene.

In the Early Miocene, about 22 Ma ago, the subduction zone marking the boundary between the Pacific and Australian Plates was located off northeastern North Island roughly parallel to present day Coromandel and Northland Peninsulas. Melting along the sinking edge of the Pacific Plate, as it was driven under the Australian Plate, gave rise to an arc of giant stratovolcanoes west of Northland, the Waitakere volcano near Auckland being one of them (Hayward, 1993; Hayward, Murdoch, & Maitland, 2011). Smaller volcanoes also formed further east on the Northland Peninsula from near Kaitaia to Whangarei, where activity lasted until about 15 Ma. On the Coromandel Peninsula, volcanicity was also widespread and vigorous in Mid-Miocene time. But meanwhile, rotation of the Pacific Plate relative to the Australian Plate caused the plate boundary off northeastern North Island to move gradually further east towards its present position off the East Coast. The resulting tension forced rifting to extend in a southerly direction and eventually was responsible for the opening of the Bay of Plenty and Taupo Volcanic Zone (Wallace, Beavan, McCaffrey, Berryman, & Denys, 2007). The Chatham Rise marine plateau also migrated south and so permitted southwards propagation of the subduction zone into the Marlborough region of northeast South Island.

Renewed tectonic activity in the Mid-Miocene, about 10 Ma ago, resulted in the emergence of parts of Zealandia that contribute to the fabric of present-day New Zealand. Uplift exposed a seafloor surface covered by marine sediments. The emerging terrain would first have been trimmed by waves as it was raised and then, as it became higher and exposed to subaerial processes, would have been gullied and incised by newly formed rivers and streams. The cover of Cenozoic sediments was thick (1000s of metres), and compression of the more deeply buried sediments had hardened them. Yet eventually in some places the entire sedimentary cover was eroded away by terrestrial processes, stripping it off so completely that the basement rocks beneath were reexposed. In this way, parts of the ancient landscape of Zealandia were revealed again—fragments of ancient Gondwana were reappearing and contributing to the evolving landscape of New Zealand—and after an interruption of millions of years were also once more exposed to subaerial erosion. But exposure in some places was temporary and closely followed by resubmergence. Such events sometimes occurred in the Mio-Pliocene, but were followed by renewed uplift in the Late Pliocene and Pleistocene. The tectonic upheaval that had forced the emergence of New Zealand had in the process fractured, tilted and buckled the ancient Waipounamu land surface, so that it was no longer intact over great distances and in some places was completely destroyed.

Legacy of Gondwana

In perceptive early investigations of New Zealand's landscape, Cotton (1916, 1922) recognised the significance of an ancient erosion surface that he had observed in various parts of the country, referring to it as a ‘fossil erosion surface’ or a ‘stripped fossil plain’. He offered an explanation of its formation and provided many examples of its occurrences throughout the country. Benson (1935) added further observations and called it the Cretaceous Peneplain, because of its estimated age. He also pointed out that the exhumed surface is sometimes cut across by another younger erosion surface that he considered to be of Late Tertiary (Neogene) age (Fig. 1.7). Because the Cretaceous Peneplain is particularly well displayed in central Otago, some scientists have also referred to it as the Otago Peneplain (Photo 1.2).

Fig. 1.7 Benson's (1935) diagrammatic depiction of relationships between the Cretaceous Peneplain (Waipounamu erosion surface), overlying cover rocks and a Late Tertiary Peneplain. (A) Following uplift, erosion of Tertiary sedimentary cover eventually reveals the underlying Cretaceous Peneplain. (B) Later tectonic movements deform the Cretaceous Peneplain, and subsequent erosion removes both Tertiary coverbeds and basement rocks, with transported gravels being deposited in nearby valleys, so that by the Late Tertiary the surface has been reduced to baselevel. (C) The Late Tertiary Peneplain is uplifted and can be seen to intersect the stripped, inclined surface of the Cretaceous Peneplain. (D) The most recent episode of tectonic activity deforms both the Late Tertiary and Cretaceous Peneplain surfaces. Uplift promotes further erosion and river gravels continue to accumulate in topographic depressions. Copyright permission granted by the Geographical Society of NSW.

Photo 1.2 View across Central Otago. Warped, block faulted and stripped of Cenozoic marine coverbeds, but still presenting the morphological legacy of an ancient Gondwana landscape.

The term ‘peneplain’ that Benson used had been adopted from a concept developed by Davis (1899), who is considered by many to be the father of modern geomorphology (Chorley, Beckinsale, & Dunn, 1973). Davis had formulated the theory of the ‘cycle of erosion’, in which he explained how an uplifted landscape is reduced by subaerial erosion through a series of stages (which he called youth, maturity and old age) from initially high mountainous relief to a final undulating plain near sea level. He realised that rivers could not erode below the level of the sea into which they discharged, and so sea level was recognised to be the base level of erosion. Davis argued that, given enough time, rivers would erode mountains down to a level controlled by the sea and that on attaining base level the resulting erosion surface would have a low undulating topography—not quite a perfect plain—and so he called it a peneplain. The term therefore implies that the erosion processes that produced it were subaerial, such as by rivers (fluvial erosion) and wind (aeolian erosion), and that coastal and marine processes are not implicated.

The Cretaceous Peneplain described by Cotton and Benson was later investigated more closely by LeMasurier and Landis (1996), who observed that it must have been partly developed by marine processes, in fact by fluvial erosion followed by subsidence and then marine erosion. Thus the genetic term peneplain is inappropriate in this case, and the more general term ‘erosion surface’ is to be preferred, because it admits both fluvial and marine erosion. They named this ancient landform the ‘Waipounamu erosion surface’.

LeMasurier and Landis noted that the erosion surface bevels Mid-Cretaceous rocks, that the levelling had almost reach completion in coastal regions by 75 Ma ago, and therefore that it must have begun to form before Zealandia broke away from Gondwana. It seems remarkable that, in spite of the Waipounamu erosion surface having been developed long before the present boundary between the Australian and Pacific Plates was established, it is still recognisable in parts of the modern landscape, where it has been mapped by Mortimer (1993), Turnbull (2000), and Forsyth (2001) (Fig. 1.8). It is also particularly well displayed with relatively little tectonic disturbance on northern Chatham Island, where it truncates Chatham Schist of Mid-Cretaceous or older age (Photo 1.3). The reason for its preservation is that it was buried and protected. The Waipounamu surface extended over Zealandia, but it subsided below sea level and was covered by thick marine sediments for millions of years. Only in the last few million years has uplift raised the surface and enabled erosion to strip off its overlying sediments. This has exhumed parts of the Waipounamu erosion surface, but most of it still lies below sea level on the continental platform around New Zealand, where it remains hidden by a thick blanket of marine deposits. The same erosion surface has also been identified across other pieces of former Gondwana, as in West Antarctica, for example (LeMasurier & Landis, 1996).

Fig. 1.8 Part of the Waipounamu erosion surface in central Otago as mapped by Turnbull (2000). The outlines of lakes near Queenstown and Wanaka are shown in grey.

Photo 1.3 This Chatham Island landscape does not look like New Zealand. Not surprising, it is exhumed Gondwana. The area was submerged in the Cenozoic, blanketed with marine sediments and then uplifted and stripped. The schist surface at around 70 m now has a veneer of Quaternary sediments. Eroded peaks of former mainly Pliocene submarine volcanoes protrude above the general surface with Mt Diffenbach/Hemokawa (134 m) on the left.

The dates of submergence and burial of the Waipounamu landscape varied around Zealandia. Evidence for this is found in the contrasting ages of sediments that are deposited directly onto the bevelled ancient basement rocks. For example, parts of the Waipounamu erosion surface were close to sea level in the Mid- to Late Cretaceous when river sediments and swamps accumulated near the coast and in coastal waters. Thus Cretaceous sediments about 105 million years old rest unconformably on greywacke basement rocks in the Huiarau–Raukumara Ranges in East Cape, and Late Cretaceous coal measures overlie truncated greywacke near Waipara in North Canterbury and rest on greywacke near Greymouth in Westland. After Zealandia became isolated, subsidence continued through the Paleogene (65–25 Ma), but not uniformly or simultaneously with some parts remaining longer above sea level. By the Early Eocene (55 Ma) the landscape comprised an archipelago of rocky islands. With further subsidence they became covered in sands and muds eroded from nearby land, and as the sea became deeper and clearer, the seafloor accumulated thick sheets of shell fragments. Thus at Waipu in Northland, Oligocene limestones (~32 Ma) rest directly on underlying greywacke rocks, and in the Mangakowhai valley near Te Kuiti in the King Country, Oligocene limestones were deposited directly onto an ancient boulder-strewn coastal platform in greywacke. About 430 km to the southwest at Oparara in the Buller region of northwest South Island, Oligocene limestones are found on eroded Devonian granites, but nearby, beneath the Thousand Acre Plateau and Matiri Range, similar granites are overlain by Eocene sandstones. A further 550 km to the southwest at Tunnel Burn on the western shores of Lake Te Anau, Late Eocene (~35 Ma) sandstones are found on Fiordland basement rocks.

We may conclude from observations such as these that the Waipounamu erosion surface had started to form when Zealandia was still part of Gondwana prior to 85 Ma and that ongoing erosion, including marine planation, continued in places to trim the surface until the time of maximum submergence of Zealandia about 25 Ma. Thus it is not simply a Cretaceous Peneplain, but a complex polygenetic erosion surface (because it has involved both terrestrial and marine erosion processes) that developed over perhaps 60 million years between the Late Cretaceous and Late Oligocene. In places, its formation was well advanced before the break-up of Gondwana, and LeMasurier and Landis (1996) considered levelling to have been complete in coastal regions by c.75 Ma, but erosion of the surface continued in the various fragments of Gondwana even as they dispersed; thus scattered remnants of the erosion surface are recognisable in modern landscapes of New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica.

Deformation of the Waipounamu Erosion Surface

The Waipounamu erosion surface provides a reference horizon for Gondwana, a window on an ancient landscape. As a result of plate convergence and uplift, that part of the ancient landscape located in Zealandia was fractured and deformed under the stress of crustal plate collision. Many fragments were uplifted and tilted, but others foundered. The deformation of the Waipounamu erosion surface is, therefore, of interest to an investigation of New Zealand landforms because it provides a physical expression of the deformation of Zealandia caused by plate tectonics. The current location and attitude of fragments of that surface give a measure of variations in the amount of uplift, faulting and folding in different places.

As the Tasman Sea widened and Zealandia subsided, marine sediments buried the Waipounamu surface and the load contributed to its depression hundreds to thousands of metres below sea level. In many places the ancient land surface still remains buried in marine basins, but elsewhere uplift occurred and the emerging rocks became exposed to denudation processes that exposed the basement beneath. Although remnant patches of Cenozoic sediments across the country are testament to their former much greater extent, about half the rock outcrop of New Zealand is now composed of Mesozoic or older rocks. Where fragments of the exhumed Waipounamu surface are intact, it is possible to judge by how much and in what way the initial Waipounamu surface has been deformed, bearing in mind, firstly, that the surface was never perfectly flat but had low relief and, secondly, that over the millions of years when it was being developed the sea level to which the erosion surface was adjusted would have been up to 50 m higher than present. This is because in the Early Cenozoic there were no polar ice caps, and hence a greater volume of water occupied ocean basins than at present.

A good example of where the stripped and uplifted Waipounamu erosion surface can be seen today is in northwest Nelson (Photo 1.4), where the surface is traversed by the Heaphy Track as it crosses Gouland Downs. This is one of the places where Cotton (1916) first recognise the significance of this ‘stripped fossil plain’ or uplifted denudation plain with its still uneroded island-like patches of limestone (Fig. 1.9), although other exhumed fragments of the ancient surface are evident elsewhere in the region (Fig. 1.10). Other more extensive patches of the Waipounamu landscape are found in central Otago on the summit plateau of the Hawkdun Range (~1500 m) (Photo 1.5) and northeastern slopes of the Kakanui Mountains (~1300 m) west of Oamaru, and in the Lammerlaw Range (~1100 m) west of Dunedin, amongst many other places (Fig. 1.8). In western North Island, a small piece of the ancient surface can be seen on Te Uku plateau (490 m) southeast of Raglan Harbour, and at localities where stripping of the Cenozoic cover rocks is incomplete. The Waipounamu surface is also revealed underground along the courses of cave streams that flow beneath patches of limestone at the contact with the underlying ancient surface. This is the case, for example, at Two Tone Cave near Waipu in Northland (where the contrast in colour between the limestone roof and the dark greywacke floor inspired the cave's name) at Broken Hill Cave near Piopio in the King Country, and at Honeycomb Hill Cave near Karamea (where the stream flows on an ancient surface cut across granite) in the northern Buller region. However, in complete contrast to all the above, in many parts of South Island vigorous uplift has raised and tilted the surface so much, and erosion has been so intense that all traces of the Waipounamu surface have been lost, totally destroyed by erosion. Such is the case in a broad zone along the axis of the Southern Alps.

Photo 1.4 A tilted exhumed fragment of the Waipounamu erosion surface forms the skyline across the Tasman Mountains (1500–1800 m) in northwest Nelson, with the Takaka valley (150 m) in the foreground.

Fig. 1.9 Cotton's sketch of the Gouland Downs. The two bush-covered hillocks in the foreground are remnant patches of the former cover of Oligocene limestone, the erosion of which revealed the underlying Waipounamu surface cut across Paleozoic rocks. From Cambridge, U. P. (1941). Landscape, fig. 213.

Fig. 1.10 An oblique Google Earth image looking north-eastwards across the Tasman coast of northwest Nelson towards Golden Bay. The Waipounamu surface is fractured by faults and so is seen at different elevations on Gouland Downs (650 m), Mackay Downs (800 m) and Gunner Downs (1200 m). © 2016 Google, image Landsat.

Photo 1.5 The Waipounamu erosion surface is responsible for the horizontal summit of the Hawkdun Range (~1800 m), central Otago. Photo Lloyd Homer, GNS Science.

From Gondwana to Pacific Archipelago

From the above account we may appreciate that, whereas parts of Zealandia were submerged by the Late Cretaceous, other places remained above sea level until at least the Late Paleogene. There was sufficient relief for some islands to remain emergent for millions of years after other areas had subsided and been drowned, and it is possible—even probable—that there were always some places above sea level. For example, during the interval of maximum submergence of Zealandia, there is evidence that Fiordland was an area of quite high relief in the Early Oligocene, was lower and close to sea level by the Late Oligocene, but remained a terrestrial area of low relief through the Early Miocene and into the Pliocene (Norris & Turnbull, 1993). But it must be admitted that detailed knowledge of the paleogeography of Zealandia since its separation from Gondwana is insufficient to be totally sure whether it drowned or if there were always some parts above water (Bassett et al., 2014; Campbell, 2013). Nevertheless, the very survival of ancient animals such as tuatara (Sphenodon), the only surviving member of a reptilian order that first appeared in the Lower Triassic, and Peripatus, a velvet worm invertebrate similar to species found in Tasmania, strongly suggests that there were always some parts above sea level that acted as island refugia. Gibbs (2006) discusses the history of life in New Zealand in detail.

From this review we see that the scene was set for Zealandia in the supercontinent of Gondwana before it broke into the pieces that were to become Australia, India, Antarctica and New Zealand, and also before the creation of the great Southern Ocean that now extends right around the Southern Hemisphere. Today in New Zealand we find fragments of the ancient Gondwana landscape as undulating surfaces of low relief, usually presenting as tilted plateau that form parts of the skyline. On closer inspection, we can deduce the antiquity of these surfaces from the fact that they are being exhumed from beneath patches of overlying Cenozoic rocks: the younger cover beds are being peeled off by erosion to reexpose the ancient land surface beneath. Preeminent examples are found in the iconic uplands of central Otago in parts of the Knobby and Lammerlaw Ranges and elsewhere (Forsyth, 2001; Mortimer, 1993). More often than not the ancient erosion surface is severely fractured by faults, tilted and deformed by younger tectonic events but, in spite of that disruption, its form can still be reconstructed by contouring the top of the Mesozoic rocks beneath the Cenozoic cover. This has been done, for example, in the Kawhia–Raglan area of western North Island (Fig. 1.11) and in north Otago (Forsyth,