Abstract: Structure and Development of Southeast Georgia Embayment-Blake Plateau

William P. Dillon, Charles K. Paull, Richard T. Buffler

Multichannel seismic-reflection profiles from the Southeast Georgia Embayment-Blake Plateau area, totaling 4,700 km, and extrapolations from deep-sea drilling data indicate that sediments were deposited on a very broad shelf until Late Cretaceous time; subsequently, little deposition took place on the present Blake Plateau, and only a relatively narrow shelf has built up during Cenozoic time. Location of the Cretaceous shelf break, at the edge of the Blake Plateau, was controlled by depositional processes north of the Blake Spur and by reef growth southward. The Cape Fear arch is present as a broad gentle warping of Cretaceous beds on the inner Blake Plateau south of Cape Fear. Post-Neocomian Cretaceous deposition is centered in a northeast-trending trough extending from he inner Blake Plateau off Jacksonville, Florida, to the outer Blake Plateau off Charleston, South Carolina. A secondary sedimentary basin, the Blake-Bahama basin, is present in the deep sea seaward of the escarpment. The inferred Triassic unconformity deepens abruptly from 9 to > 12 km on the south side of the extension northwestward from the deep sea of the Blake Spur fracture zone.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90968©1977 AAPG-SEPM Annual Convention and Exhibition, Washington, DC