--> ABSTRACT: Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Cenozoic and Late Mesozoic Erosion and Deposition along the Western Margin of Southern Africa, by Roderick W. Brown, Andrew J. W. Gleadow, Derek J. Rust, M. A. Summerfield; #91003 (1990).

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ABSTRACT: Temporal and Spatial Patterns of Cenozoic and Late Mesozoic Erosion and Deposition along the Western Margin of Southern Africa

Roderick W. Brown, Andrew J. W. Gleadow, Derek J. Rust, M. A. Summerfield

Compared with subsidence history and eustatic sea level change, sediment supply has been a neglected component of studies of passive margin stratigraphy. The spatial and temporal pattern of sediment supply to continental margin, however, is a critical factor in determining the architecture of offshore sedimentary sequences.

Sediment routing across passive margins is controlled primarily by their tectonic development and the consequent morphological evolution of the subaerial part of the margin. By combining offshore sediment volume and sedimentation rate data based on isopach maps and borehole records with apatite fission-track analysis and denudational modeling onland, the depositional history of the western margin of southern Africa has been related to its geomorphic response to continental rifting.

The sediment volume data indicate a declining rate of sedimentation after rifting in the Early Cretaceous despite a probable enlargement of the sediment source area through time. Similarly, apatite fission-track ages and confined track length distributions indicate an Early Cretaceous episode of relatively high erosion rates which affected areas both inland and oceanward of the major topographic discontinuity along the margin represented by the Great Escarpment. Late Cenozoic rates of erosion and sediment supply have been low, although much of the sediment source area is still at a significant elevation. Although aridity may have contributed to this reduction in sediment supply, the morphological response to the tectonic evolution of the margin has also been crucial.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91003©1990 AAPG Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, June 3-6, 1990