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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 53 (1969)

Issue: 3. (March)

First Page: 719

Last Page: 719

Title: Mobility of Atlantic Coastal Plain and Shelf: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Thomas G. Gibson

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

Although the Atlantic margin of the United States has been considered to have a similar but less mobile history than the Gulf margin, new data and reevaluation of existing data indicate quite different histories for the two areas. The Atlantic margin is a mobile area with sediment thicknesses approaching those of the Gulf margin, but most of the deposition along the Atlantic margin occurred during the Mesozoic whereas the Gulf received the largest amount of sediments during the Cenozoic. Mobility, however, continued in the Atlantic margin during the Cenozoic, but this mobility did not always parallel that occurring in the Gulf; times of transgression in the Gulf Coast may correspond to regressions in the Atlantic Coast and vice versa.

Cenozoic mobility of the Atlantic margin is illustrated by a consideration of Miocene paleoenvironments and stratigraphic data. Several basins existed along the Atlantic margin during the Miocene; some of the basins were open to the ocean, but others were restricted from open circulation. Among those basins, mobility was differential throughout the Miocene. Miocene deposition took place in water as deep as upper bathyal within the present coastal margin, and primary phosphorite is associated with the deeper parts of the basins.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists