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Model of Reef Diagenesis: Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia

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Reef Diagenesis

Abstract

Located within the Tuamotu Archipelago (Fig. 1), the Mururoa Atoll is characterized by an elongate morphology (25 × 9 km) which probably reflects the composite nature of its volcanic basement (Gachon 1985) situated at minimum depths of 180 m below lagoonal sea level and at depths varying between 350 and 450 m below peripheral islands (Buigues 1982). Radiometric datings (Labeyrie et al. 1969) indicate that volcanic activity ceased about 7 million years ago, approximately at the end of the Miocene. The considerable thickness of reefoid carbonates has been determined essentially by sustained Neogene subsidence of the Darwin ridge (Brousse 1985).

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© 1986 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Aissaoui, D.M., Buigues, D., Purser, B.H. (1986). Model of Reef Diagenesis: Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia. In: Schroeder, J.H., Purser, B.H. (eds) Reef Diagenesis. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-82812-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-82812-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-82814-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-82812-6

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