The Great Rift Valleys of Pangea in Eastern North America: Tectonics, structure, and volcanism

Book excerpt: The breakup of the Pangean supercontinent in the Triassic-Jurassic age left great rift basins containing an extraordinary record of the physical and biological conditions which precipitated a major extinction event at the time. These basins collectively form a rift province called the Central Atlantic Margin, which spans more than 45 degrees of paleolatitude and records over 35 million years of Earth history. Leading experts present a detailed review of the rift province's geology, paleobiology, and geophysics. This extensive two-volume work offers in-depth coverage of the North American components of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province. In volume 1, leading researchers give thorough reviews and highlight recent advances in our understanding of the structural geology, tectonics, and volcanism of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province.