Abstract The Chatham Rise is a continental submarine plateau extending east from the South Island of New Zealand. The rise, along with the rest of the New Zealand plateau, was separated from the Gondwana continental margin by rifting and extension in the mid-to Late Cretaceous. The structure of the rise is dominated by large half-grabens formed mainly by south-dipping listric faults of several kilometers downthrow that parallel the strike of the rise. The rise subsided due to thermal relaxation in the Paleogene. Clastic sedimentation, which prevailed in the Cretaceous rift and early postrift phases, gave way almost everywhere in the Paleogene to authigenic limestone and greensand deposition. Sediment starvation and erosion in the Neogene have resulted in a thin, mainly authigenic and volcaniclastic sedimentary section on the rise crest. However, late Neogene uplift of the Southern Alps along the developing Indo-Australian/Pacific plate boundary brought renewed clastic sedimentation at the western end of the rise. As well as tectonic effects, effects of paleosea-level change can be found in seismic and sedimentological data from the region.