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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 39 (1955)

Issue: 1. (January)

First Page: 137

Last Page: 137

Title: Matching Land and Sea Floor Topography and Structures off California: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Henry W. Menard

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

Recently discovered seascarps, and mountain ranges on the deep sea floor off California have a pattern which is closely related to the pattern of topography and structure on land, and may help to fill in missing elements in the land pattern. The sea floor for more than a thousand miles west of California is fractured along two narrow parallel zones which intersect the coastline near Cape Mendocino and Point Conception with an easterly trend. The zones of fracturing can be interpreted as shear zones complementary to the San Andreas fault. The southern band of fracturing has the same trend and position as the Channel Islands and the Transverse Ranges. The band of earthquakes which trends out to sea northwest from Cape Mendocino lies along a submerged continuation of the Coa t Ranges separated from the continental slope by a vast trough. The topography of the sea floor off the northwestern United States, therefore, is roughly a mirror image of the Baja California Peninsula and the Gulf of California.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists