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Eastern Atlantic Continental Margins: Various Structural and Morphological Types

  • Chapter
The Geology of Continental Margins

Abstract

Eight seismic-reflection profiles across the Eastern Atlantic continental margin collected during several cruises of the Centre Océanologique de Bretagne are presented. They have been chosen to illustrate the fact that margins presumably related to continental breakup and later subsidence show large variations in their morphology and structure. This variety is due to the combined action of many factors, most of them presumably linked to the geometry and rate of the ocean opening. The most important of these are the relative motion of spreading oceanic crust and continental basement, fracture zones and their related marginal offsets and ridges (LePichon and Hayes, 1971), thermal evolution of the oceanic crust (Sleep, 1971), sediment supply and current action (Emery and Uchupi, 1972), eustatic sea-level changes (Rona, 1973), the presence of postopening closed basins of limited duration (Leyden et al., 1972; Pautot et al., 1973), the stress system developed across the margin (Bott and Dean, 1972), and sedimentary loading and consequent flexure (Walcott, 1972).

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Authors
  1. Vincent Renard
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  2. Jean Mascle
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Mobil Oil Corporation, 221 Nassau Street, 08540, Princeton, New Jersey, USA

    Creighton A. Burk (Chief Geologist) (Chief Geologist)

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, 03755, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

    Charles L. Drake (Professor of Earth Sciences) (Professor of Earth Sciences)

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© 1974 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Renard, V., Mascle, J. (1974). Eastern Atlantic Continental Margins: Various Structural and Morphological Types. In: Burk, C.A., Drake, C.L. (eds) The Geology of Continental Margins. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01141-6_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-01141-6_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-662-01143-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-01141-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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