HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

We present a global inventory of transform continental margins, based on both a worldwide comparison of continent-ocean boundary identifications with oceanic fracture zones traces, and a compilation of published regional studies. This inventory increases the number of identified transform margins from 29 to 78. These margins represent 16% of continental margins in cumulative length and 31% of non-convergent margins. We include morphological data, published upper crustal sections, continent to ocean transition locations and published Moho shape data in the new database. This review confirms that continent to ocean transitions are sharper at transform margins than at divergent margins. It also emphasizes the structural diversity of transform margins. Associated with one third of transform margins, we define marginal plateaus as a new type of relief that corresponds to a flat but deep surface inside the continental slope, and that may be inherited from crustal thinning prior to transform faulting.Transform margin initiation appears to be favoured along propagating oceans and within cold and thick lithospheres.