Ignition of the southern Atlantic seafloor spreading machine without hot-mantle booster.

The source of massive magma production at volcanic rifted margins remains strongly disputed since the first observations of thick lava piles in the 1980s. However, volumes of extruded and intruded melt products within rifted continental crust are still not accurately resolved using geophysical methods. Here we investigate the magma budget alongside the South Atlantic margins, at the onset of seafloor spreading, using high-quality seismic reflection profiles to accurately estimate the oceanic crustal thickness. We show that, along ~ 75% of the length of the Early-Cretaceous initial spreading centre, the crustal thickness is similar to regular oceanic thickness with an age > 100 Ma away from hot spots. Thus, most of the southernmost Atlantic Ocean opened without anomalously hot mantle, high magma supply being restricted to the Walvis Ridge area. We suggest that alternative explanations other than a hotter mantle should be favoured to explain the thick magmatic layer of seaward dipping reflectors landward of the initial mid-oceanic ridge.

The non-cylindrical crustal architecture of the Pyrenees.

We exploit the data from five seismic transects deployed across the Pyrenees to characterize the deep architecture of this collisional orogen. We map the main seismic interfaces beneath each transect by depth migration of P-to-S converted phases. The migrated sections, combined with the results of recent tomographic studies and with maps of Bouguer and isostatic anomalies, provide a coherent crustal-scale picture of the belt. In the Western Pyrenees, beneath the North Pyrenean Zone, a continuous band of high density/velocity material is found at a very shallow level (~10 km) beneath the Mauleon basin and near Saint-Gaudens. In the Western Pyrenees, we also find evidence for northward continental subduction of Iberian crust, down to 50-70 km depth. In the Eastern Pyrenees, these main structural features are not observed. The boundary between these two domains is near longitude 1.3 °E, where geological field studies document a major change in the structure of the Cretaceous rift system, and possibly a shift of its polarity, suggesting that the deep orogenic architecture of the Pyrenees is largely controlled by structural inheritance.

Birth of an oceanic spreading center at a magma-poor rift system.

Oceanic crust is continuously created at mid-oceanic ridges and seafloor spreading represents one of the main processes of plate tectonics. However, if oceanic crust architecture, composition and formation at present-day oceanic ridges are largely described, the processes governing the birth of a spreading center remain enigmatic. Understanding the transition between inherited continental and new oceanic domains is a prerequisite to constrain one of the last major unsolved problems of plate tectonics, namely the formation of a stable divergent plate boundary. In this paper, we present newly released high-resolution seismic reflection profiles that image the complete transition from unambiguous continental to oceanic crusts in the Gulf of Guinea. Based on these high-resolution seismic sections we show that onset of oceanic seafloor spreading is associated with the formation of a hybrid crust in which thinned continental crust and/or exhumed mantle is sandwiched between magmatic intrusive and extrusive bodies. This crust results from a polyphase evolution showing a gradual transition from tectonic-driven to magmatic-driven processes. The results presented in this paper provide a characterization of the domain in which lithospheric breakup occurs and enable to define the processes controlling formation of a new plate boundary.

A mechanism to thin the continental lithosphere at magma-poor margins.

Where continental plates break apart, slip along multiple normal faults provides the required space for the Earth's crust to thin and subside. After initial rifting, however, the displacement on normal faults observed at the sea floor seems not to match the inferred extension. Here we show that crustal thinning can be accomplished in such extensional environments by a system of conjugate concave downward faults instead of multiple normal faults. Our model predicts that these concave faults accumulate large amounts of extension and form a very thin crust (< 10 km) by exhumation of mid-crustal and mantle material. This transitional crust is capped by sub-horizontal detachment surfaces over distances exceeding 100 km with little visible deformation. Our rift model is based on numerical experiments constrained by geological and geophysical observations from the Alpine Tethys and Iberia/Newfoundland margins. Furthermore, we suggest that the observed transition from broadly distributed and symmetric extension to localized and asymmetric rifting is directly controlled by the existence of a strong gabbroic lower crust. The presence of such lower crustal gabbros is well constrained for the Alpine Tethys system. Initial decoupling of upper crustal deformation from lower crustal and mantle deformation by progressive weakening of the middle crust is an essential requirement to reproduce the observed rift evolution. This is achieved in our models by the formation of weak ductile shear zones.