Contractional Cornucopia on Offshore Angola

Abstract

Three main contractional tectonic regimes are recognized: (1) Late Cretaceous gravity spreading, (2) Mid-Tertiary uplift, and (3) Neogene transpression. Tilting of the young continental margin created the first tectonic regime, the ultimate cause of this was thermal subsidence after continental breakup. The second regime was the direct cause of the uplift of the Angolan coast, mostly in the Oligo-Miocene but continuing into the Plio- Pleistocene, while the late tectonic regime was probably the differential movement of reactivated crustal blocks, whose slip directions depended on their orientation