New seismic and bathymetric data reveal that the plate boundary zone between the North American and South American plates, east of the Caribbean, has occupied a >200-km-wide zone of localized basement uplift and folding, and of faulting of the sedimentary cover, during the early Pleistocene to Holocene. This zone, which includes the Barracuda Ridge and Tiburon Rise, exhibits north-south compressional structures and continues eastward up to 500 km from the boundary of the Caribbean plate. A sequence of young turbiditedominated sediments fi lls the basin between these two ridges and shows synsedimentary deformation; the base of the sequence is of early Pleistocene age, dated by biostratigraphic correlation with Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 27. Recent deformation in the turbidite-fi lled trough north of the Barracuda Ridge is shown by uplift of the seafl oor at the crests of anticlines, across which the shallowest sediment layers thin or pinch out.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.