The late Palaeozoic Cumberland Basin of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (eastern Canada) developed as a strike-slip basin in the aftermath of the Middle Devonian Acadian Orogeny. Following deposition of thick salt during the middle Vis ean (middle Mississippian), this basin mainly accommodated fault-controlled continental deposits during the late Vis ean, which generated halokinesis from clastic loading. The Mississippian halokinetic history of this basin is cryptic, as it was severely distorted by subsequent tectonic and halokinetic overprints. After minor structural restoration, the study of upper Vis ean minibasin units in wide coastal sections and deep wells allowed a fairly detailed reconstruction of the Mississippian halokinetic setting to be made. Paleoenvironments and depositional settings in the western part of the basin include sectors that were proximal to three fault-bounded source areas and characterized by alluvial fan systems transitioning laterally into gravelly to sandy braidplain environments. More central areas of the basin were characterized by tidal flats transitioning laterally into shallow marine environments. Because of halokinesis, the marine body was eventually forced to subdivide into three separate salt expulsion minibasins. Although late Vis ean marine incursions were short-lived in the rest of eastern Canada due to ongoing glacioeustatic variations, there are sedimentologic and stratigraphic lines of evidence for the long-lasting entrapment of restricted marine bodies in salt expulsion minibasins of the western Cumberland Basin. In one minibasin that was characterized by especially high accommodation rates, NE of Hopewell Cape (New Brunswick), the proximal conglomerates and marine carbonates of a fan-delta setting transition laterally into thick sulphate over a short distance, away from freshwater inputs from the source area. The vertical continuity of the latter sulphate succession suggests that this entrapped evaporitic basin was cut-off from significant marine influxes, even at times of glacioeustatic highstands. This is in contrast with salt expulsion minibasins in open marine shelf settings, which always remain open to global marine transgressions and regressions.

The Visean–Serpukhovian transition in Atlantic Canada was marked by a general humidification of the climate as the region drifted towards equatorial latitudes. It also corresponds to a time when ice volume was increasing on Gondwana, which marked the end of Mississippian marine incursions in the region. Glacioeustatic fluctuations of greater magnitude are thought to have increased the response of the regional climate to third-order cyclicity from orbital forcing. In the Cumberland Basin, fluvial grey beds of the lower Serpukhovian Shepody Formation were deposited in sub-humid conditions during highstands, whereas red playa deposits of the same unit were deposited under semi-arid conditions during lowstands. Basin reconstruction suggests that this unit was sourced from the fault-bounded Cobequid and Caledonia highlands and deposited in two separate salt-withdrawal minibasins. This fluvial system was seemingly discharging to the north into the broad lake that deposited the contemporaneous Hastings Formation. A disconformity separates the Shepody Formation from mid-Serpukhovian red beds of the Claremont Formation and is tentatively associated with another increase in ice volume on Gondwana followed by a recrudescence of fault activity and basin subsidence. A prolonged time of aridity, floral crisis, non-deposition, deep weathering and karstification in late Serpukhovian to early Bashkirian times is contemporaneous with abundant glacial deposits in higher latitudes, suggesting that globally low sea levels may have been at play in creating a situation of greater continentality in the study area.

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