[9] The Pocklington Rise and Plockington Trough separate the Woodlark Basin from the old subduction and spreading centers in the Australian plate from before 20 million years ago.

[6][Notes 3] A distinctive feature of the Woodlark Basin that scientists and researchers explored is the transition from continental rifting to sea floor spreading.

[10] In the region of the basin, towards its west, there has been unusually rapid emplacement, at greater than 1–2 cm/year (0.39–0.79 in/year) vertically, of the youngest seven to five million year old rocks in metamorphic core complexes and gneissic domes.

[13] Geological samples from the dark smoking chimneys showed the lack of the typical enrichment in gold or lead found in vents in back-arc settings (i.e. in contrast to the much older hydrothermal vents in the very western parts of the basin) and is consistent with basalt related hydrothermal fields along mid-oceanic ridges elsewhere.

[11] The eastern basin volcanics near its spreading center are only covered by a thin sediment dusting composed of nanofossil-bearing clay.

[14] This is great for researchers because different features, such as faults and spreading centers, can easily be seen in satellite images of the basin due to the lack of sediment buildup.

[15] From the Cheshire Seamount in the western Woodlark Basin samples had been intensely hydrothermally altered from precursor andesitic to rhyolitic composition with quartz growth, from over time magmatic processes, silicification, chloritization, formation of illite, sericitic alteration, replacement of plagioclase by albite, and sulfidation associated with concentration of precious metals and other minerals.

[14] Where the Woodlark Basin is subducted northeast beneath the New Georgia Islands in the deformation associated with the northern San Cristobal Trough,[16] the relative light plate made of recent oceanic type basalt stays shallow.

[17] The local tectonics are driven by the oblique convergence of the present Pacific and Australian plates at about 11 cm/year (4.3 in/year) near eastern Papua New Guinea.

[15] This produces one of the Euler poles for the region near the west coast of New Guinea between Port Moresby and Hood Point to its south.

[19] The Woodlark Basin originally began to open as a sphenochasm with a pole near the tip of eastern Papua about 20 million years ago.

A recent best fit model suggests there is some continuing subduction at the Trobriand Trough which is at the southern aspect of the Solomon Plate.

[21][Notes 3] This model seems to account for the relative lack of shallow earthquake activity except in the middle region of the Trobriand Trough.

[17] In between the Woodlark Basin is subducted northeast beneath the New Georgia Islands but here the deformation front lacks a flexed outer rise and bathymetric trench.

The Woodlark Basin is actively spreading in a mostly north and south direction across its center, in an east–west orientation in a process that started about 3.6 million years ago.

[28][16] Satellite imaging helped the visual identification that the spreading rates across the basin are uneven, before full global positioning studies.

[11] Historically seafloor spreading to the west of the Moresby transform did not commence until 4 to 2 million years ago, after the arc volcanism that accompanied uplift of both the D'Entrecasteaux Islands gneissic domes and Suckling-Dayman massif of the Pupuan Peninsula of New Guinea.

[23] It is also known that prior to 4 million years ago seafloor spreading in the Woodlark Basin was up to 240 km (150 mi) east of the Simbo Transform where it ends today.