The map is one of the last in a 16-year project to comprehensively re-map New Zealand.
The new Fiordland map is the result of 10 years' work, and seven summers of field work, involving geologists from all over the world.
Taking in about 12,000sq km, it included the Te Anau, Manapouri, and Monowai lakes in the east, Hump Ridge in Western Southland, and offshore, the steep slopes west of Fiordland, and Foveaux Strait in the far southwest.
Dr Turnbull said the maps confirmed previous indications minerals such as gold and fossil fuels such as lignite were not present in Fiordland in significant deposits.
The area's geological significance lay in the depth at which many rocks formed - 60km to 70km below the surface.
This was even deeper than first believed.
Only about a dozen rock sites around the world were formed as deep down, Dr Turnbull said.
The fieldwork confirmed previous indications of offshore oil.
Oil companies had been hunting for oil for decades, and were probably at the point where more drilling was needed to determine what was there, Dr Turnbull said.
In some cases the work had thrown up more questions than it had produced answers.
Previous "over-enthusiastic" theories about how Fiordland formed might have to be revised.
The work had not found evidence of significant active faults aside from the Alpine Fault.
However, this might be due to the history of glaciers in the area, the remains of which tended to disguise ground evidence of active faults.
Fiordland was rising on the eastern side of the Alpine Fault, and the Australian plate sinking.
Perhaps most significantly, mudstone containing fossilised cold-water organisms was found near Puysegur Point, in an area previously mapped as granite.
Geologists had not expected to find evidence of a one-time fiord at the "bottom of a gorge", he said.
Newly found cave systems could be exciting for caving enthusiasts.
One system was at the head of the Rum River, Dr Turnbull said.
An "awful lot of rubbish" had been left by hunters.
At one point, geologists lifted out a helicopter-load of rubbish.
The map replaced work published in the 1960s.
It is the 18th of 21 to be published since the quarter-million scale map, or QMAP project, began in 1994.
