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Giant Mounded Drifts in the Mozambique Continental Margin: Origins and Global Implications for the History of Thermohaline Circulation
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, Third EAGE Eastern Africa Petroleum Geoscience Forum, Nov 2017, Volume 2017, p.1 - 4
Abstract
The Mozambique Channel is located in the northernmost part of the deep Mozambique basin. It evidences the complex geodynamic evolution linked with the break-up of Gondwanaland. The basin hosts a record of sediments since the Jurassic separation of East Gondwana (Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica) and West Gondwana (Africa and South America). The present-day basin is characterized by a superimposition of water masses originating from the South: the Antarctic Bottom Waters (AABW), the Circumpolar Deep Waters (CDW) and the Antarctic Intermediate Waters (AAIW); but also from the North with the North Atlantic Deep Waters (NADW) and the Red Sea Water (RSW). By mean of seismic reflection profiles, we reveal the main structure and sediment distribution of the basin, allowing the reconstruction of its evolution associated with the main bottom water flows that influenced the depositional development. Since the Cretaceous, sediment distribution in the western part of the Channel was mainly influenced by gravity driven processes from the East African continental margin, and then modified by bottom currents. We identify up to nine units in the basin which took place: (1) Before the Neocomian, (2) between the Neocomian and the top Cenomanian, (3) between the top Cenomanian and the base Tertiary, (4) during the Paleocene-Eocene, (5) during the Oligocene, (6) from the top Oligocene to the Middle Miocene, (7) during the Upper Miocene, (8) in the Pliocene and (9) in the Pleistocene.