Evidence for ocean-continent crust boundary beneath the abyssal plain of the East Central Atlantic

Details Evidence for ocean-continent crust boundary beneath the abyssal plain of the East Central Atlantic Evidence for ocean-continent crust boundary beneath the abyssal plain of the East Central Atlantic

Sep 1987

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1987pepi...48..115s&link_type=abstract

Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Volume 48, Issue 1-2, p. 115-129.

Physics

4

Scientific paper

A survey of geophysical results and basalt characteristics of the East Central Atlantic suggests that such data are at present unable to define the seaward limit of the thinned continental crust. The combined evidence from margin sedimentation, deep-sea diapirism, salinity concentration in DSDP-IPOD cores, and the distribution of deep-sea barite and palygorskite-sepiolite assemblages indicate that the Central Atlantic developed from a wide rift basin within a normal continental setting. The notion of an extensive pre-drift basin gains additional support from the occurrences of Lower Cretaceous black shales which are interpreted as resulting from a tectonomagmatic forerunner phase to the actual continental separation process. Seafloor spreading which appears to have commenced at around 90 Ma B.P. (Cenomanian-Turonian), following major phases of subsidence and crustal attenuation in Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous, is identified by an apparently sharp change-over from reducing to oxygenated deep-sea environment as well as by the `onset' of a major sedimentary hiatus. The new development model of the East Central Atlantic is regarded as a representative example of a global pattern; commencement of seafloor spreading in the Upper Cretaceous probably explains the world wide `Cenomanian' transgression as well as the formation of extensive Upper Cretaceous sedimentary basins in the interior of the major continental blocks. A consequence of this model is that vertical crustal dynamics seem to be as important as seafloor spreading in the development of the oceanic lithosphere. Thus, in the Central Atlantic spreading is probably confined only to the region of the elevated Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Permanent address: Institute of Geophysics, University of Bergen, Allegt. 70,5000 Bergen (Norway).

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