Multifold seismic reflection profiles were used in conjunction with results from Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Leg 77 to interpret the early Late Cretaceous to Holocene geologic history of the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. During the mid-Cenomanian(?) to early Paleocene(?), this region began to record the effects of a collision between a northward-migrating island arc (now part of Cuba) and a salient of the North American plate. More than 2 km (6,560 ft) of gravity-flow deposits accumulated in an elongate structural corridor or foredeep along the base of the modern Cuban slope, while the slope itself was the site of both folding and overthrusting. Clastics continued to dominate the depositional regime until the late Eocene, at which time the Cuban arc had been firmly we ded to North America. A late middle to early late Eocene hiatus in Site 540, which coincides with a prominent regional seismic unconformity, marks the transition from predominantly terrigenous input to pelagic/hemipelagic deposition. Since the late Eocene, the southeastern gulf has recorded multiple cycles of deposition and erosion. Unconformities displayed on seismic profiles are numerous. Erosional agents have included the Gulf Stream system, and turbidity currents and debris flows concentrated in the vicinity of submarine canyons. Continuing slope instability is indicated by slide/slump planes along canyon walls.