Tectono-Stratigraphic Framework and Paleostress Modelling of the East African Margin

The structure and evolution of sedimentary basins on rifted continental margins are strongly controlled by the tectonic processes during margin formation, e.g. rift, transitional, break-up and drift stages. Along the East African and West Madagascan Margins, these tectonic processes originate from the fragmentation of Gondwana since the early Jurassic and the opening of the NW Indian Ocean. We present a new comprehensive plate kinematic model for the opening of the Northwest Indian Ocean based on finite rotation poles generated by a method of visual fitting and iterative joint inversion of magnetic isochron and fracture zone data [1, 2], together with a detailed review of the basin fill history of the East African and West Madagascan marginal sedimentary basins.