Chapter 11

SEDIMENTARY BASINS
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The official definition of a sedimentary basin is: a low area in the Earth’s
crust, of tectonic origin, in which sediments accumulate. Sedimentary basins
range in size from as small as hundreds of meters to large parts of ocean basins.
The essential element of the concept is tectonic creation of relief, to provide both
a source of sediment and a relatively low place for the deposition of that
sediment.

1.2 Keep in mind that a sedimentary basin doesn’t have to be a place on the
Earth’s surface with strictly basinal shape, with closed contours, like a washbowl:
great masses of sediment can be deposited on a surface with a gentle and
uniform slope. But implicit in the concept of a sedimentary basin is the existence
of prolonged crustal subsidence, to make a place for a thick deposit of sediment
that might well have been deposited in an area without basinal geometry at the
surface. Tectonics is needed to make sedimentary basins, but the record of the
basin itself is sedimentary.

1.3 As with most blanket statements, the one above has exceptions to it. A
sedimentary basin can be made just by erecting high land in an adjacent area by
volcanism.
• 1.4 The term “sedimentary basin” is usually not applied to relatively thin and
very extensive deposits of sandstone, limestone, and shale from
epicontinental seas on the cratons, many of which have seen no
deformation through billions of years, but only to relatively thick deposits in
tectonically active areas with negative relief. (But intracratonic basins are
the exception in this regard.)

• 2. TECTONICS AND SEDIMENTATION

• 2.1 Tectonics is the most important control on sedimentation; climate is a
rather distant second. The important effects of tectonics on sedimentation,
direct or indirect, include the following: • nature of sediment • rate of
sediment supply • rate of deposition
• depositional environment
• nature of source rocks
• nature of vertical succession

• 2.2 In fact, tectonics affects climate itself, by way of effects as broad as the
distribution of oceans and continents, and as local as rain shielding by local
mountain ranges. And sedimentation itself affects tectonics, although to a
much lesser extent, mainly by increasing the lithospheric loading in the
basin.
• 2.3 The other side of the coin is that by far the best way of telling
paleotectonics is by the sedimentary record in sedimentary basins. The
disposition of sediment types, sediment thicknesses, and paleocurrents in a
basin gives evidence of the existence and location of elevated areas of the
crust created by tectonism.
• 3. QUESTIONS ABOUT SEDIMENTARY BASINS
• 3.1 Here are some important questions you might ask about a given
sedimentary basin:
– What was the size and shape of the basin, and how did these change
as the basin was filled?
– Is (was) the basin floored by continental crust or oceanic crust?
– What were the kinds and proportions of sediments that filled the basin?
– What were the sources of the sediment, and by what pathways was it
transported to the depositional sites?
– What was the history of filling of the basin?
– How can the original geometry of the basin be distinguished from
subsequent deformation of the basin?
– What was the overall tectonic setting of the basin?
• 4. PRACTICAL THINGS ABOUT BASINS
• 4.1 The only basins that are preserved in their entirety are those that lie
entirely in the subsurface! Basins exposed at the surface are undergoing
destruc-tion and loss of record by erosion. So there’s an ironic tradeoff
between having more complete preservation in the subsurface but less
satisfactory observations.
• 4.2 How do you gather data on sedimentary basins? There aren’t many
ways, really: surface mapping; cores; and subsurface geophysics, mainly
seismic profiling.
• 4.3 What kinds of things can you do with the data, to help you answer some
of the questions posed above? Here’s a list of some the fairly standard
things you can do. These range from very descriptive to very interpretive. It
makes sense to do the descriptive things first and then work toward the
more interpretive.
– master cross sections: with the present land surface as the most
natural datum, construct several detailed physical cross sections
through the basin to show its geometry and sediment fill.
– stratigraphic sections: construct a graph, with time along the vertical
axis, showing the time correlations of all the major rock units along
some generalized traverse across the basin. Such a section includes
hiatuses, during which there was nondeposition or erosion.
– isopach maps: with some distinctive stratigraphic horizon near the top
of the section as datum, draw a contour map showing isopachs
(isopachs are loci of equal total sediment thickness) in the basin.
– lithofacies maps: for one or a series of times, draw a map showing
distri-bution of sediment types being deposited at that time.
• ratio maps: compute things like sand/shale ratio, integrated over the entire
section or restricted to some time interval, and plot a contour map of the
values.
• paleocurrent maps: for one or a series of times, draw a map showing the
direction of paleocurrents in the basin at that time (see below for more
detail).
• grain-size maps: for the entire basin fill, averaged vertically, or for some
stratigraphic interval or time interval, draw a map that shows the areal
distribution of sediment grain size. This is especially useful for conglom-
eratic basins.

• 4.4 Another interpretive thing you can do is draw diagrams (qualitative or

semiquantitative) showing the evolution of depositional–paleogeographic–
paleotectonic setting of the basin, by means of maps and sections. These
could range from cartoons to detailed representations drawn to scale
.
• 4.5 Just within the past ten years, computational techniques known as
backstripping have been developed to “undo” the deposition in a
sedimentary basin. This involves restoring the basin to a whole series of
past configurations by removing one layer of sediment at a time and
adjusting for compaction, subsidence, and sea-level change. This lets you
reconstruct the configuration of the basin through time, perhaps by drawing
palinspastic cross sections for various time intervals. In a way, this is the
next best thing to having in your possession a time-lapse movie of the entire
development of the basin.
• 4.6 This is a good place to warn you about vertical exaggeration of cross
sections of sedimentary basins. Cross sections are almost always drawn
with great vertical exaggeration, typically somewhere between 10:1 and
100:1. This is because in true scale most basins are relatively thin
accumulations, hundreds to thousands of meters of sediment spread over
distances of tens to hundreds of kilometers. So to see the relationships
adequately in cross sections, the sections have to have great vertical
exaggeration. Carefully constructed sections show both the vertical and the
horizontal scale, but cartoons often don’t show the scales.
• 5. PALEOCURRENTS
• 5.1 Much effort has gone into developing ways of figuring out paths of
dispersal of sedimentary material in basins. One of the standard ways is to
mea-sure paleocurrent directions recorded locally in the rocks. (A
paleocurrent is just what the term implies: a current, of water or wind, that
existed at some time in the past.) Techniques are well established.
• 5.2 Knowledge of paleocurrents is helpful in solving both local and re-gional
problems of sedimentary basins. Locally, paleocurrent directions can help
you to figure out or predict, indirectly, the shape and orientation of sediment
bodies, like channel sandstones. This has obvious advantages in petroleum
explo-ration. Regionally, paleocurrent directions can help establish
paleoslope and source of sediment supply to the basin.
• 5.3 You have already heard about a lot of the features that can be used to
establish paleocurrent directions. Here’s a list of the most important, with
anno-tations: Cross-stratification. Measure the local orientation of laminae
in the cross sets, on the theory that the local downdip direction, which
presumably is the direction of progradation of the foreset slope, is likely to
represent fairly closely the local current direction. That’s true, however, only
if the bed forms were reasonably two-dimensional. If the bed forms were
three-dimensional, resulting in trough cross stratification, measurement of
foreset dip directions at local places in the cross sets can be very
misleading; it’s much better to try to ascertain the orientation of the trough
fills themselves, although it takes good outcrops to do that. Seeing rib and
furrow is by far the most reliable way of obtaining a paleocurrent direction
from cross-stratified deposits, but unfortunately it’s uncommon to see on
outcrop.
• Bed forms. If you are lucky enough to see bedding planes covered with
symmetrical ripples or dunes, you can get an excellent measurement of
current direction.
• Clast orientation. Long axes of the larger clasts in a clastic deposit,
whether gravel or sand, are commonly oriented by the current, although the
orientation may be rather subtle. The problem is that the orientation relative
to the current (flow-transverse? flow-parallel?) depends on the flow itself in
ways not well understood. So beware of clast orientation in and of itself.
Pebble imbrication is an exception, and should always be sought in gravels
and conglomerates. (But see below under parting lineation.)
• Sole marks. Flutes and grooves at the bases of turbidites and other strong-
current-event beds give excellent evidence of the direction of the initial,
eroding current. But keep in mind that the later current that did the
depositing did not necessarily flow in exactly the same direction. Parting
lineation. Parting lineation is thought to reflect a subtle anisotropy in rock
strength caused by a statistical tendency toward alignment of sand grains in
a sandstone parallel to the current direction. It gives excellent evidence of
the orientation of the current, but unfortunately not the direction.

• 5.4 The paleocurrent measurements you take from dipping beds are no
good in themselves: what you need to do is “undeform” the strata by
rotating them back to horizontal, taking your paleocurrent measurements
with them. That’s straightforward (using a stereonet by hand, or a computer
program)provided that the strata are not strongly deformed. But the greater
the deformation, the more uncertain is the exact way you should be
undeforming the strata.
• 6. HOW BASINS ARE MADE
• 6.1 Introduction
• 6.1.1 In one sense, the origin of sedimentary basins boils down to the
question of how relief on the Earth is created. Basically, there are only a few
ways, described in the following sections.
• 6.2 Local
• 6.2.1 On a small scale, hundreds to thousands of meters laterally, fault
movements can create relief of hundreds to thousands of meters, resulting
in small but often deep basins (some of these are called intermontane
basins; think about places like Death Valley). You might guess that it takes
dip-slip fault movements to create new relief, but that’s not true: steps (in
the proper sense) along strike-slip faults can produce small pull-apart
basins; more on them later. Relief of this kind is on such a small scale that
it tends not to be isostatically compensated. It’s like setting a block of
granite out on your driveway; the flexural rigidity of your driveway is great
enough compared with the imposed load that the granite block is prevented
from finding its buoyant equilibrium position.
• 6.3 Regional
• 6.3.1 Basin relief can be created mechanically on a regional scale in two
very important ways: thermally or flexurally, or by a combination of those
two effects). Each of these is discussed briefly below. Keep in mind that
basins can also be made just by making mountain ranges, on land or in the
ocean, by volcanism.
• 6.5.1 Another important way to make basins is to park a large load on some
area of the lithosphere (Figure 11-4). The new load causes that lithosphere
to subside by isostatic adjustment. But because the lithosphere has
considerable flexural rigidity, adjacent lithosphere is bowed down also. The
region between the high-standing load and the lithosphere in the far field (in
the parlance of geophysics, that just means far away!) is thus depressed to
form a basin. This model has been very successful in accounting for the
features of foreland basins, which are formed ahead of large thrust sheets
that move out from orogenic areas onto previously undeformed cratonal
lithosphere.
• 7. GEOSYNCLINES
• 7.1 The concept of geosynclines was developed in the last century to deal
with the existence of thick successions of sedimentary rocks in what we
would to-day call orogenic belts. A geosyncline is large troughlike or
basinlike downwarping of the crust in which thick sedimentary and volcanic
rocks accumulated. Usually, but not always, such accumulations are
deformed during a later phase of the same geological cycle in which they
were deposited. You can see by the definition that there is a close, although
not one-to-one, correspondence between geosynclines and what we are
discussing here as sedimentary basins.
• 7.2 The geosyncline concept was developed in an effort to understand the
regularities of sedimentation in orogenic belts. Over the decades, in both
Europe and North America, the concept was elaborated to an extreme
degree, with lengthy classifications and polysyllabic terminology. The
problem was that geologists were able to recognize distinctive kinds of
sedimentary basin fills associated with orogenic belts, and characteristic
histories of subsequent deformation of those sediment fills, but no one really
knew the tectonic significance of geosynclines. The universal acceptance of
plate tectonics has provided a rational framework in which to interpret the
development and history of sedimentary basins once called geosynclines.
Plate tectonics has simply made the geosyncline concept obsolete. (I’m
mentioning it here just because it played such a large part in thinking about
tectonics and sedimentation in past times.)
• 7.3 About the only term in common use that is left over from the heyday of
geosynclines is miogeocline, for the prograding wedge of mostly shallow-
water sediment at a continental margin. The sediment thicken sharply
oceanward and pass into thinner deep-water sediments.
• 8. CLASSIFICATION OF SEDIMENTARY BASINS 8.1
Introduction
• 8.1.1 How might one classify sedimentary basins? Here’s a list of
some of the important criteria that could be used, ranging from more
descriptive at the top of the list to more genetic at the bottom of the
list: nature of fill more descriptive geometry paleogeography
tectonic setting more genetic
• 8.1.2 Nowadays sedimentary basins are classified by tectonic (and,
specifically, plate-tectonic) setting. That’s fairly easy to do for
modern basins, but it’s rather difficult to do for ancient basins. (By
modern basins I mean those still within their original tectonic setting;
by ancient basins I mean those now separated from their original
tectonic setting.) This emphasizes the need for good description and
characterization, even if some kind of formal descriptive
classification is not actually used.
• 8.1.3 In the following pages is a brief account of the most important
kinds of sedimentary basins.
8.2 Intracratonic Basins location and tectonic setting: in anorogenic areas
on cratons (Figure 11-5).
• tectonic and sedimentary processes: These basins have no apparent
connection with plate tectonics. They are thought to reflect very slow
thermal subsidence (for times of the order of a hundred million years) after a
heating event under the continental lithosphere. But the reasons for
depression below the original crustal level are not understood. Erosion
during the thermal uplift seems untenable, as does lithospheric stretching.
Was the lithosphere made more dense in the area under the basin? Was
the lithosphere thinned by “erosion” from beneath? Whatever the reason,
the subsequent subsidence can be modeled very well by cooling and
isostatic adjustment.
• Subsidence is so slow that there seems to have been no depression of the
up-per surface of the lithosphere, so depositional environments are mostly
the same as those in surrounding areas; the succession is just thicker.
These successions are also more complete, however—there are fewer and
smaller diastems—so at times the basin must have remained under water
while sur-rounding areas were emergent. (A diastem is a brief interruption
in sedimentation, with little or no erosion before sedimentation resumes.)
• size, shape: rounded, equidimensional, hundreds of kilometers across.
• sediment fill: shallow-water cratonal sediments (carbonates, shales,
sandstones), thicker and more complete than in adjacent areas of the
craton but still relatively thin, hundreds of meters.
• 8.3 Aulacogens location and tectonic setting: extending from the
margins toward the interiors of cratons (Figure 11-5). tectonic and
sedimentary processes: Aulacogens are thought to represent the
third, failed arm of a three-armed rift, two of whose arms continued
to open to form an ocean basin. In modern settings, aulacogens end
at the passive continental margin. An example is the Benue Trough,
underlying the Congo River Basin in West Africa. The ocean
eventually closes to form an orogenic belt, so in ancient settings
aulacogens end at an orogenic belt; an example is the basin filled by
the Pahrump Group (Proterozoic) in Nevada and California. size,
hhape: long, narrow, linear; tens of kilometers wide, many hundreds
of kilometers longsediment fill: very thick (up to several thousand
meters); coarse to fine silici-clastics, mostly coarse, minor
carbonates; mostly nonmarine, some marine; contemporaneous
folding and faulting; the succession often passes upward, with or
without major unconformity, into thinner and more widespread
shallow-marine cratonal siliciclastics and carbonates.
• 8.4 Rift Basins location and tectonic setting: within continental
lithosphere on cratons (Figure 11-5). tectonic and sedimentary
processes: Lithospheric extension on a craton, presumably by
regional sublithospheric heating, causes major rifts. Some such rifts
continue to open and eventually become ocean basins floored by
oceanic rather than continental crust; the basin description here then
applies to this earliest stage of the rifting. In other cases, the rifts fail
to open fully into ocean basins (perhaps some adjacent and parallel
rift becomes the master rift), so they remain floored by thinned
continental crust rather than new oceanic crust. (Keep in mind that
we may be doing too much lumping here.) A modern example: the
East African rift valleys. An ancient example: the Triassic–Jurassic
Connecticut and Newark basins in eastern North America. Sediment
supply from the adjacent highlands of the uplifted fault blocks is
usually abundant, although in the East African rifts the land slope is
away from the rim of the highlands, and surprisingly little sediment
reaches the rift basins. size, shape: long, narrow, linear; tens of
kilometers wide, up to a few thousand kilometers long sediment fill:
Coarse to fine siliciclastics, usually nonmarine; often lacustrine
sediments; interbedded basalts
• processes: This category of basins is transitional between intracontinental
rift basins, described above, and passive-margin basins, described below.
Basins described here have opened wide enough to begin to be floored with
oceanic crust but are still so narrow that the environment is either still
nonmarine or, if marine, has restricted circulation. Modern examples are the
Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In the ancient, the sediment fill of such a
basin is likely to underlie passive-margin sediments deposited later in the
history of ocean opening.

• size, shape: long, narrow; straight or piecewise straight; tens to a few

hundreds of kilometers wide, up to a few thousand kilometers long.

• sediment fill: mafic volcanics and coarse to fine nonmarine siliciclastics, as

in intracratonic rift basins described above, passing upward and laterally
into evaporites, lacustrine deposits, and fine marine sediments, often metal-
rich from hydrothermal activity at the spreading ridge.

• 8.6 Passive Margin Basins

• location and tectonic setting: Along passive continental margins,
approximately over the transition from continental to oceanic crust formed
by rifting and opening of a full-scale ocean basin (Figures 11-6, 11-7).
• processes: As an ocean basin opens by spreading, the zone of heating
and ex-tensional thinning of continental crust on either side of the ocean
basin sub-sides slowly by cooling. Sediments, either siliciclastics derived
from land or carbonates generated in place, cover this subsiding transition
from conti-nental crust to oceanic crust with a wedge of sediment to build
what we see today as the continental shelf and slope. In the context of the
ancient, this represents the miogeocline. The subsidence is accentuated by
loading of the deposited sediments, resulting in a prominent downbowing of
the continental margin. Deposition itself therefore does not take place in a
basinal geometry, but the base of the deposit is distinctively concave
upward.
• size, shape: Straight to piecewise straight, often with considerable
irregularity in detail; a few hundreds of kilometers wide, thousands of
kilometers long.
• sediment fill: Overlying and overlapping the earlier deposits laid down
earlier during rifting and initial opening are extensive shallow-marine
siliciclastics and carbonates of the continental shelf, thickening seaward.
These sediments pass gradually or abruptly into deeper marine fine
sediments of the continental slope and rise, often grading or interfingering
seaward into deep-marine coarse and fine siliciclastics or resedimented
carbonates in the form of turbidites building submarine fans at the base of
the slope and filling the deepest parts of the ocean basin to form abyssal
plains.
8.7 Trenches location and tectonic setting: In the abyssal ocean, at the line
of initial downbending of the subducted oceanic-crust plate in a subduction
zone (Figures 11-7, 11-8).
• tectonic and sedimentary processes:
• (1) Open-ocean pelagic sediments (mainly abyssal brown clay and
organic oozes) are conveyor-belted to the trench, and underlie the
sediments, thin to thick, deposited in the trench itself.
• (2) What happens to the sediments delivered to or deposited in the
trench? While still within the trench they are little deformed, but they
don’t stay that way long. They are either scraped off the descending
plate to form an accretionary wedge, whose structure ranges from
chaotically mixed material in a subduction mélange to a fairly
regular imbricated succession of underthrusted sheets dipping
toward the arc (note: the thrust sheets themselves get younger
downward, but within a given plate the sediments get younger
upward), or they are dragged down the subduction zone. The extent
of the latter process is controversial, but cases have been
described. size, shape: long and narrow (tens of kilometers wide,
thousands of kilomeeters long), arcuate, with convex side toward the
oncoming subducted plate. sediment fill: varies from thin (hundreds
of meters) pelagic sediments (fine abyssal muds, volcanic ash) to
thick (thousands of meters) arc-derived coarse siliciclastics and
volcaniclastics, as local fans built perpendicular to the trench axis or
oblong fanlike bodies built parallel to trench axis.
• 8.8 Trench-Slope Basins location and tectonic setting: On the
inner (arcward) wall of subduction-zone trenches (Figures 11-7, 11-
8). tectonic and sedimentary processes: The basins are formed
as low areas, with closed contours, between adjacent thrust sheets
in the growing accretionary wedge. Near-surface folding of sediment
in the accretionary wedge may also be a factor in the development
of the basins. These basins intercept some of the sediment carried
as turbidity currents from upraised older parts of the accretionary
complex, or from the more distant arc itself. size, shape: Small (no
larger than kilometers wide, tens of kilometers long, often smaller);
linear, and elongated parallel to the trench. sediment fill: deep-
marine silts and muds sedimented directly into the basins or
slumped into the basins from higher on the slope; also coarser
siliciclastics supplied from farther upslope by turbidity currents.
• 8.9 Fore-Arc Basins location and tectonic setting: In subduction zones
(Figures 11-7, 11-8); between the upraised subduction complex just inboard
of the trench and the volcanic arc (in the case of ocean-ocean subduction)
or the overriding continent (in the case of ocean–continent subduction).
processes: As subduction proceeds, a relatively low area, usually below
sea level, is formed between the relatively high outer arc upraised by
subduction and the inner volcanic arc built by subduction magmatism.
Ancient examples of such fore-arc basins are likely to be tectonically
isolated from the originally adjacent areas. After an arc–continent collision,
another variant of fore-arc basin can be formed between the outer arc and
the overriding continent. These basins are likely to be filled mainly from the
high land of the tectonically active continent. Later continent–continent
collision would make direct reconstruction of their tectonic setting difficult.
size, shape: tens of kilometers to over one hundred kilometers wide, up to
thousands of kilometers long; commonly arcuate.
• sediment fill: nonmarine siliciclastic fluvial to deltaic deposits at the
arcward margin pass seaward into deep marine siliciclastics, mainly
sediment-gravity-flow deposits, all interbedded with arc-derived volcanics
flows and pyroclastics. Section thickness can be many thousands of meters.
• 8.10 Foreland Basins location, tectonic setting, processes: There are
two kinds of foreland basins: retro-arc foreland basins, which are formed
on stable continental crust by loading by thrust sheets moving toward the
continental interior as a result of compression and crustal shortening in an
ocean–continent subduction zone, and peripheral foreland basins, formed
after continent–continent collisions by loading of the continental crust of the
subducted plate by development of thrust sheets in the continental crust of
the subducted plate directed back away from the subduction zone (Figures
11-7, 11-8). Both kinds tend to be asymmetrical, with their deepest parts
nearest the emplaced thrust sheets. They tend to migrate away from the arc
or suture zone with time. They are filled by sediments derived from the
mountainous terrain associated with the compression and thrusting. size,
shape: tens to a few hundreds of kilometers wide, hundreds to thousands
of kilometers long; often with varying development along their length;
commonly arcuate or piecewise arcuate, reflecting the geometry of
subduction.
• sediment fill: Coarse fluvial siliciclastics, mainly as alluvial fans, thinning
and fining away from the arc or suture, often passing into shallow-marine
sandstone–shale successions if sea level is high enough to flood the basin.
Thicknesses are up to many thousands of meters. The classic molasse
facies, thick nonmarine conglomerates, is deposited in foreland basins.

• 8.11 Remnant Basins location and tectonic setting: within suture zones
formed by continent–continent collision (Figures 11-8, 11-9).
• processes: Continental margins and subduction zones are (for different
reasons, connected with geometry of rifting and geometry of subduction)
commonly irregular in plan rather than straight, so when continent–continent
collision eventually comes to pass, certain salients of continental crust
encounter the subduction zone before reentrants. With further subduction
and suturing, this creates isolated basins still floored by residual oceanic
crust, which receive abundant sediment from adjacent strongly uplifted
crust.
• size, shape: many tens to hundreds of kilometers across; irregular in
shape.
• sediment fill: very thick and highly varied, with strong lateral facies
changes; usually fluvial at the margins, commonly passing into deep-marine
sediment-gravity-flow deposits; sometimes the basin becomes sealed off
from the ocean, so that facies include lacustrine sediments.
• 8.12 Pull-Apart Basins
• location and tectonic setting: Locally along major strike-slip or transform
faults, either in continental crust or in oceanic crust (Figure 11-9).
• processes: If a strike-slip fault is stepped or curved rather than straight,
movement along it tends to produce tension, where the sense of the
curvature and movement are such that the walls of the fault are pulled apart
from one another (this kind of regime is described as transtensile), or
compression,
• where the sense of the curvature and movement are such that the walls are
pushed against one another (this kind of regime is described as trans-
pressive). In the tensional segments, gaps or basins are produced which
are filled with sediment from adjacent high crust.
• size, shape: There is a strong tendency for pull-apart basins to be
rhomboidal. They range from approximately equidimensional early in their
history to elongated later. Widths are kilometers to a few tens of kilometers,
and lengths are kilometers to many tens of kilometers. Some basins are
even smaller than this.
• sediment fill: The continental-crust basins, which are the most significant
sedimentologically, are filled by thick nonmarine to marine coarse to fine
clastics, often as alluvial fans passing into lake deposits or into deposits of
restricted marine environments. In some cases thick marine turbidites fill the
distal parts of the basin. There is usually sharp variation in facies laterally,
and the thickness of the lithologic units may be not much greater than the
lateral extent, or even less. Deposition is concurrent with elongation of the
basin, so be wary of total section thickness computed by bed-by-bed
measurements of the section.
• 9. LITERATURE 9.1 Here are some literature sources on sedimentary
basins. Some of these are textbooks or monographs, others are collections
that are outgrowths of sym-posia. I haven’t listed individual papers on the
sedimentology, stratigraphy, tectonics, or geophysics of sedimentary basins,
but you can find references to most of them in the sources listed below.
These sources thus would provide you an efficient entry into the literature
on sedimentary basins. Ballance, P.F., and Reading, H.G., 1980,
Sedimentation in Oblique-Slip Mobile Zones. International Association of
Sedimentologists, Special Publication 4, 265 p. Brenner, R.L., and
McHargue, T.R., 1988, Integrative Stratigraphy; Concepts and Applications:
Prentice Hall, 419 p. Dickinson, W.R., ed., 1974, Tectonics and
Sedimentation: Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists,
Special Publication 22, 204 p. Dott, R.H., Jr., and Shaver, R.H., eds., 1974,
Modern and Ancient Geosynclinal Sedimentation: Society of Economic
Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Special Publication 19, 380 p.
• Hallam, A., 1981, Facies Interpretation and the Stratigraphic Record:
Freeman, 291 p.
• Leggett, J.K., ed., 1982, Trench–Forearc Geology; Sedimentation and
Tectonics on Modern and Ancient Active Plate Margins: Geological Society
of London, Special Publication 10, 576 p.
• Miall, A.D., 1984, Principles of Sedimentary Basin Analysis: Springer, 490 p.
• Mitchell, A.H.G., and Reading, H.G., 1986, Sedimentation and Tectonics, in
Reading, H.G., ed., Sedimentary Environments and Facies, Second Edition:
Blackwell, p. 471-519.
• Potter, P.E., and Pettijohn, F.J., 1977, Paleocurrents and Basin Analysis,
Second Edition: Springer, 425 p.