The opening of the Central Atlantic Ocean basin that separated North America from northwest Africa is well documented and assumed to have started during the Late Jurassic. However, the early evolution and the initial breakup history of Pangaea are still debated: most of the existing models are based on one or multiple ridge jumps at the Middle Jurassic leaving the oldest crust on the American side, between the East Coast Magnetic Anomaly (ECMA) and the Blake Spur Magnetic Anomaly (BSMA). According to these hypotheses, the BSMA represents the limit of the initial basin and the footprint subsequent to the ridge jump. Consequently, the evolution of the northwest African margin is widely different from the northeast American margin. However, this setting is in contradiction with the existing observations. In this paper, we propose an alternative scenario for the continental breakup and the Mesozoic spreading history of the Central Atlantic Ocean. The new model is based on an analysis of geophysical data (including new seismic lines, an interpretation of the newly compiled magnetic data, and satellite derived gravimetry) and recently published results which demonstrate that the opening of the Central Atlantic Ocean started already during the Late Sinemurian (190 Ma), based on a new identification of the African conjugate to the ECMA and on the extent of salt provinces off Morocco and Nova Scotia. The identification of an African conjugate magnetic anomaly to BSMA, the African Blake Spur Magnetic Anomaly (ABSMA), together with the significant change in basement topography, are in good agreement with that initial reconstruction. The early opening history for the Central Atlantic Ocean is described in four distinct phases. During the first 20 Myr after the initial breakup (190-170 Ma, from Late Sinemurian to early Bajocian), oceanic accretion was extremely slow (∼ 0.8 cm/y). At the time of Blake Spur (170 Ma, early Bajocian), a drastic change occurred both in the relative plate motion direction (from NNW-SSE to NW-SE) and in the spreading rate (an increase to ∼ 1.7 cm/y). After a small increase between Chron M25 (∼ 154 Ma, Kimmeridgian) and Chron M22 (∼ 150 Ma, Tithonian), the spreading rate slowed down to about 1.3 cm/y and remained fairly constant until Chron M0 (125 Ma, Barremian-Aptian boundary). In addition, kinematic reconstructions illustrate a significant spreading asymmetry during the early history of the Central Atlantic Ocean; the accretion rates were higher on the American side and led to the formation of more oceanic crust on this plate. We infer that this asymmetry could be related to the fact that the thermal anomaly responsible for the significant magmatism of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) was preferentially located below the African plate.

The Messinian Salinity Crisis is well known to have resulted from a significant drop of the Mediterranean sea level. Considering both onshore and offshore observations, the subsequent reflooding is generally thought to have been very sudden. We present here offshore seismic evidence from the Gulf of Lions and re‐visited onshore data from Italy and Turkey that lead to a new concept of a two‐step reflooding of the Mediterranean Basin after the Messinian Salinity Crisis. The refilling was first moderate and relatively slow accompanied by transgressive ravinement, and later on very rapid, preserving the subaerial Messinian Erosional Surface. The amplitude of these two successive rises of sea level has been estimated at ≤500 m for the first rise and 600–900 m for the second rise. Evaporites from the central Mediterranean basins appear to have been deposited principally at the beginning of the first step of reflooding. After the second step, which preceeded the Zanclean Global Stratotype Section and Point, successive connections with the Paratethyan Dacic Basin, then the Adriatic foredeep, and finally the Euxinian Basin occurred, as a consequence of the continued global rise in sea level. A complex morphology with sills and sub‐basins led to diachronous events such as the so‐called ‘Lago Mare’.This study helps to distinguish events that were synchronous over the entire Mediterranean realm, such as the two‐step reflooding, from those that were more local and diachronous. In addition, the shoreline that marks the transition between these two steps of reflooding in the Provence Basin provides a remarkable palaeogeographical marker for subsidence studies.

The drastic climatic changes which characterise the cooling trend of the last few million years of Earth history led to variations in eustatic sea level that had tremendous impact on the geology and ecology of continental margins. Reconstructing a sea-level curve back in time is not an easy task. Observations of shoreline positions are always a local measurement of Relative Sea Level that needs to be corrected from the effect of tectonic and thermal subsidence, sediment loading, compaction and glacio-hydro isostasy. Extensive studies have been done for the last deglaciation and for the last 100,000 yr cycle. But very few studies deal with position of sea level during earlier cycles, simply because conditions are very rarely favourable for the preservation of such witnesses. The shelf of the Golfe du Lion (Western Mediterranean) reveals a unique record of shoreline paleopositions during glacial maxima of at least the last five circa 100 kyr glacial/interglacial cycles. In fact it is the entire glacial deltaic lobe of up to 50 m thick (from delta front or shoreface to prodelta) that has been preserved in place and which provides direct and independent constraints for relative sea-level minima. We measure a relative sea level of: − 112m, − 128, − 134, − 246 and − 262 m for MIS 2, 6, 8, 10 and 12 respectively. After corrections taking into account postdepositional movement of strata (subsidence), we find, that sea level dropped to a depth of − 102 ± 6 m during the last three glaciations (MIS2, MIS6, MIS8) but reached exceptionally low values of more than − 150 ± 10 m during the preceding glaciations MIS10 and MIS 12 at about 340 and 434 kyr BP. This general time framework and sedimentological interpretation has been confirmed by preliminary results from two deep drillings during the PROMESS cruise (july 2004), which validate our methodology. However, no detailed and absolute datings of such witnesses are available so far, so that we cannot prove that these levels are the lowest ever reached during each glacials, but they correspond undoubtedly to the last preserved shoreface before rapid sea-level rise. We also suggest that the abrupt change in sealevel maxima might be the overprint of 400 kyr orbital periodicity cycles. Last but not least, these results prove that the Golfe du Lion is indeed a unique laboratory to study paleoclimates and sea-level variations on a larger time scale. Further work is needed for a complete glacio-hydro-sedimento isostatic modelling of each sequence and each glacial to further constraint local sea level versus global sea level and quantify, in particular the relative effect of glacio-hydro isostatic effect (which differ according to ice sheet extend) but also of erosion-sedimentation isostatic effect (erosion on land and deposition on the outer shelf and slope).

S U M M A R YDeep penetration multichannel reflection and Ocean Bottom Seismometer wide-angle seismic data from the Congo-Angola margin were collected in 2000 during the ZaïAngo cruise. These data help constrain the deep structure of the continental margin, the geometry of the pre-salt sediment layers and the geometry of the Aptian salt layer. Dating the deposition of the salt relative to the chronology of the margin formation is an issue of fundamental importance for reconstructing the evolution of the margin and for the understanding of the crustal thinning processes. The data show that the crust thins abruptly, from a 30-40 km thickness to less than 10 km, over a lateral distance of less than 50 km. The transitional domain is a 180-km-wide basin. The pre-salt sediment layering within this basin is parallel to the base of the salt and hardly affected by tectonic deformation. In addition, the presence of a continuous salt cover, from the continental platform down to the presumed oceanic boundary, provides indications on the conditions of salt deposition that constrain the geometry of the margin at that time. These crucial observations imply shallow deposition environments during the rifting and suggest that vertical motions prevailed-compared to horizontal motions-during the formation of the basin.

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