Perspectives on the geology of the North Atlantic Ocean

Abstract This volume deals with the geology and geophysics of the western North Atlantic, the basin between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the eastern margin of North America. Although the book’s focus is on the “North American Basin” (Fig. 1), individual chapters and charts extend the bounds beyond the “western North Atlantic.” These extensions were dictated by the geology, which cannot be synthesized meaningfully if constrained by artificial geographic or political boundaries. Generally speaking, the content of this volume is contained within the region surrounded by the continental margins of the Antilles, eastern North America, Greenland, and Iceland in the west and north, the Mid- Atlantic Ridge crest on the east, and approximately 10°–15° N latitude to the south. However, in dealing with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, plate kinematic models, and Atlantic paleogeography, we have extended our scope north into the Arctic region and east into the eastern Atlantic in order to present a complete synthesis of this major plate boundary and its evolution through time. The significance of Iceland for oceanic geoscience often has been overlooked or underrated; to help remedy this, two chapters deal mainly with this remarkable subaerial exposure of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. One topic, mid-plate seismicity and stress, also demanded a plate-wide treatment covering the entire “stable” lithosphere from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to the western Cordillera. Placing this treatment in the North Atlantic synthesis presumes that mid-plate stress is closely related to absolute plate motion (which is calculated largely from oceanic data) and/or to “ridge-push” forces from the