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A passive margin is the transition between oceanic and continental lithosphere that is not an active plate margin. A passive margin forms by sedimentation above an ancient rift , now marked by transitional lithosphere.
The shelf usually ends at a point of increasing slope [3] (called the shelf break).The sea floor below the break is the continental slope. [4] Below the slope is the continental rise, which finally merges into the deep ocean floor, the abyssal plain. [5]
Tectonic subsidence is the sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale, relative to crustal-scale features or the geoid. [1] The movement of crustal plates and accommodation spaces produced by faulting [2] brought about subsidence on a large scale in a variety of environments, including passive margins, aulacogens, fore-arc basins, foreland basins, intercontinental basins and pull-apart basins.
As the passive margin matures, the crust and uppermost mantle become colder and stronger, so that the compensating deflection in the base of the lithosphere is broader than the actual rift. Higher flexural strength results in a broadening of the gravity anomaly with time.
The US Atlantic passive margin extends from Florida to southern Nova Scotia. This VPM was a result of the breakup of the supercontinent, Pangea , in which North America separated from northwestern Africa and Iberia to form the North Atlantic Ocean.
Magnetic anomalies off west coast of North America. Dashed lines are spreading centers on mid-ocean ridges. The Vine–Matthews-Morley hypothesis correlates the symmetric magnetic patterns seen on the seafloor with geomagnetic field reversals.
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