the stratigraphy and structural history of the mesozoic and cenozoic ...

is considered part of the Newfoundland continental margin (Enachescu, 1987 and 2004).
2.2 Regional Geology
The southeastern seaboard of Canada and its continental margin are underlain by
a suite of accretionary terrains and sedimentary basins that record a long history of
Paleozoic convergence and Mesozoic extension. Accretion of island-arc and continental
terrains to the North American craton began in the Ordovician. By the Permian the
Pangean supercontinent had formed about the Appalachian-Caledonide mountain belt
(Williams, 1984). The Appalachian orogen was built on an early Paleozoic Atlantic–type
margin (Williams, 1984), the shape of which profoundly influenced the pattern of
orogenesis and subsequent extension.
The evolution of the North Atlantic Ocean commenced with Triassic rifting
resulting in the separation of Africa and North America in the Middle Jurassic (Tankard
and Balkwill, 1989). The eastern boundary of this rift is defined by the East Coast
Magnetic Anomaly (ECMA); a narrow linear highly magnetic trend of interpreted
subareal extrusive volcanism of approximate Bajocian age, believed to mark the
boundary between continental and oceanic crust (Dehler and Keen, 2001, 2002). North
America and European separation spread northwest between Iberia and the Grand Banks
region of offshore Newfoundland in the Early Cretaceous, and finally between the
European, Greenland and North American plates in the latest Cretaceous (Enachescu,
1987; Tankard and Welsink, 1989).
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