Reply to ‘Oligocene to Holocene sediment drifts and bottom-currents on the slope of Gabon continental margin (West Africa). Consequences for sedimentation and southeast Atlantic upwelling’, Sedimentary Geology 128, 179–199 (1999)
✍ Scribed by M Séranne; C.-R Nzé Abeigne; M Lopez
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 412 KB
- Volume
- 136
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0037-0738
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
We were interested to read Rasmussen's comment on our paper, suggesting a different interpretation for the sedimentary structures occurring on the upper continental slope of southern Gabon. We welcome the opportunity to clarify some of our observations, and to add precision to our interpretation. It is not our aim, nor is this the place, to comment on Rasmussen's earlier papers (Rasmussen, 1994(Rasmussen, , 1997)), as many of the issues raised were already addressed in our paper (Se ´ranne and Nze ´Abeigne, 1999). However, since the present comment often compares points raised by both works, our answer sometimes refers to Rasmussen's earlier studies. In the following, we answer the comments sequentially.
Rasmussen argues that the sedimentary structures were formed by erosion and that "In all examples [reflector] truncation can be recognised on both sides of the canyon wall". We have presented examples of moats which do not truncate underlying reflectors in our Fig. 10, and the analysis of the seismic reflection strike profiles cross-cutting the moats (about 80 intersections) suggests that the sedimentary structures are essentially constructional. One first