Abstract
A NOTABLE feature of the continental margin south-east of South Africa is its steep slope. Off the west coast of South Africa, north of Cape Town, a thick wedge of sediments has given the slope a gentle gradient of about 1.5° (ref. 1), while southwards from Cape Town the gradient is about 5°. But when the slope turns abruptly (at the tip of Agulhas Bank, Fig. 1) to face the Indian Ocean, a steep “scarp” of up to 10° is encountered. Seismic profiling data, recently collected by the Geological Survey of South Africa, show that between the Agulhas Bank and Port Elizabeth the steep scarp can be directly related to the presence of a basement ridge beneath the continental slope.
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SCRUTTON, R., DU PLESSIS, A. Possible Marginal Fracture Ridge south of South Africa. Nature 242, 180–182 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242180b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/242180b0
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