Sri Lanka: is it a mid-plate platelet?

Two observations suggest the possibility that Sri Lanka is acting as a small-mid-plate platelet moving very slowly within and relative to the larger Indian plate. First, sediments of the Bengal Deep-Sea Fan off the SSE continental margin are folded and uplifted in a manner similar to the deformation from front of accretionary prisms where thick sediment columns are passing into subduction zones. And second, subsidence rates in the area of presumed spreading or continuing stretching of continental crust, the Cauvery-Palk Strait-Gulf of Mannar Basin, have not decreased during the Cenozoic as would be predicted by an aborted rift or aulacogen model, but instead appear to have accelerated during the Neogene. Information available on other phenomena which re predicted by the model is at the present time inadequate for evaluation

Editorial

Launch of journal Marine Geology

Editorial

Launch of journal Marine Geology

Submarine limestones in the nearshore environment off Kuwait, northern Arabian Gulf*

Even with careful petrographic and mineralogic characterization of marine limestones, intertidally and subtidally lithified rocks are often difficult to differentiate, thus hindering an accurate delineation of the diagenetic environment. Limestones from water depths of 6 to 8 m off Kuwait vary in petrographic character from oosparite and biosparite (in which the cement is entirely aragonite) to oomicrite and biomicrite (in which at least some of the cement is microcrystalline magnesian calcite). Carbon‐14 dates suggest that the oosparite may have lithified at depths shallower than at present (possibly intertidally) during a lower stand of sea‐level. In contrast the biosparite, oomicrite and biomicrite appear to be contemporaneous and to have lithified subtidally. Copyright © 1987, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserve