30 Million Year Record of the Evolution of a Continental Rift: The Early Mesozoic Newark Basin

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This project involves a continental scientific drilling program to obtain a complete, detailed record of the evolution of a classical and logistically accessible continental rift, the early Mesozoic Newark basin. A wealth of geological information available from over a century of study of the surface geology strongly indicates that a complete rift-related sequence is present. However, intrinsic limitations in the data set, posed by very discontinuous exposure combined with lateral facies variations, hampers the development of comprehensive and testable models of rift-related processes. The proposed drilling consists of 5 shallow (about 1 km each) drill holes designed to recover approximately 5,000 m section of Late Triassic age sediments and minor igneous rocks. Combined with recently available cores from the younger (Jurassic) part of the section, these represent about 30 M. yr. of the history of the rift from its inception. The physical stratigraphy of the sediments and especially the documented sedimentary cycles of climatic origin, combined with biostratigraphic, magnetostratigraphic, and chemostratigraphic control, are expected to yield a very high resolution chronostratigraphy that will serve as a standard reference section for the Early Mesozoic Newark Supergroup and thus a framework for regional (and global) correlations essential to the development of realistic models of continental rifting.