A major earthquake has rocked Papua New Guinea, damaging buildings and sparking a brief public panic.

An quake registerred 7.6 on the Richter Scale and struck the Eastern portion of the country.

The quake hit at 6.46am on Sunday and originated at a depth of 80 kilometres, according to the monitoring agency European Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC).

The US tsunami warning system issued a tsunami warning after the quake but later said the threat had passed.

There was no immediate tsunami threat to Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The quake’s epicenter, as detected by the EMSC monitoring agency

Residents took to social media sharing images and videos of cracked roads, damaged buildings and cars, and items falling off supermarket shelves.

Earthquakes are common in PNG, which sits on the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates.

A magnitude 7.5 quake rocked PNG’s remote mountainous highlands in 2018, killing more 100 people and damaging thousands of homes.

-with AAP