Abstract
Potassium-argon ages of biotite and hornblende from sixteen samples of mainly granitic plutonic rocks from West Kalimantan indicate a complex history of magmatism and cooling from the Middle Jurassic to late Cretaceous, with most ages in the range 75 to 112 Ma. Samples from the Schwaner Zone in the northern part of the area give measured ages ranging from 76 to 116 Ma. In the southern region most samples are in the range 79 to 86 Ma, but two are older (127 Ma, early Cretaceous, and 153 Ma, Middle Jurassic). In both areas, concordant ages from biotite and hornblende indicate a well-defined event at about 80 to 85 Ma, which has also been recognized to the north in Sarawak, on islands of the South China Sea, in the Malay Peninsula, south Sumatra, and in the Java Sea.
Palaeomagnetic measurements on thirty-nine samples of dyke rocks, lavas, tuffs, granites, hornfels and metatuff, all believed to be late Cretaceous, yield a mean palaeomagnetic pole at 21°E 41°N, and a palaeolatitude for West Kalimantan of 0°. The palaeomagnetic pole does not differ significantly from the Cretaceous pole estimated for the Malay Peninsula. It is concluded that since the Middle Cretaceous West Kalimantan and the Malay Peninsula have behaved as a unit, have remained in much their present latitude, but have rotated anticlockwise about 50 .
