Age and emplacement of the Mount Kinabalu pluton

Abstract

K-Ar and fission track dating indicate that Mount Kinabalu, the highest point of the Western Cordillera of Sabah, was intruded in the Middle Miocene (10 to 13.7 Ma) and exhumed in the Late Miocene (6.7 to 7.8 Ma). These igneous and uplift events are closely reflected in major unconformities documented offshore in the oilfields, aild collectively known as the Sabah Orogeny. A tectonic model is presented, which relates the emplacement and uplift to Oligocene southeastwards subduction under dragging of the Dangerous Grounds terrane of the South China Sea, followed by Miocene isostatic rebound.